Format: ebook
Release Date: October 10th, 2023
Age: Adult
Genre: Horror – Thriller
Rating: 4/5 Stars
As part of Blogtober, I’m reposting some of my Divination Hollow reviews from the last year. Usually, I review horror and similar genres over there, but October seems like a great time to highlight some of my favourites! You can read the original review here.
After the death of her husband, Cam discovers the secrets he kept from her, including a mistress and a strange ability he shared with their young daughter. Desperate for a new start, Cam and her family – adopted brother Dimi, a former Russian gangster, and five-year-old daughter Sammy – move from New York to her deceased uncle’s home in Texas. But even away from the city, Cam can’t escape Tony’s strange death, and the move raises more questions than answers.
Laurel Hightower is an expert at crafting relatable characters who may not always do the right thing, but are usually trying to. Cam is no exception. Her grief for Tony is tinged by the secrets he kept, and the betrayal of discovering her marriage was worse than it seemed. At every step, she’s trying to do right by her daughter and keep her safe, made difficult by the fact her daughter seems to have inherited her father’s talents for keeping secrets. It’s Cam’s struggles, too, that make this an interesting read, as she constantly needs to balance protecting Sammy with Sammy’s own feelings. As a mother, she’s far from perfect, and she often missteps with her daughter, struggling to protect her while she feels uncomfortable with Sammy’s ‘abilities’ and her relationship with Tony’s mistress.
Yet she would go to the ends of the earth for Sammy, and through the novel we see her learning how to really listen to her daughter, acknowledging she doesn’t always understand but she will try to. It’s something else Hightower excels at – she often writes mothers as main characters, showing these women as flawed and all too human, and underscoring it with the fact none of that, and none of the strange things they experience, make them bad mothers in the slightest.
I really liked the characters surrounding Cam, too, from the kindly, gruff neighbour dealing with his father’s dementia, to Cam’s brother, Dimi, who likes to constantly remind her he’s ‘not a good guy’. This is the third book I’ve read by Laurel, and she remains consistent in her ability to really weave horror in with motherhood, grief, and humanity, creating compelling characters facing supernatural threats with a particular kind of strength. Definitely a recommendation from me.
Unwrapping Words 