BOOK OF THE WEEK
“In dance, there is a carnivorous demand for repetition until perfection is reached.” God knows former ballerina Elodie has put the work in, but try as she might, her life is still a mess. After a whirlwind romance, she and her six-year-old son, Jude, have moved from Australia to the States and are now living in her new husband, Bren’s, inherited house. Bren is lovingly, painstakingly, restoring the house. But its run-down, construction-site state is far from the worst problem. Elodie is already at her wit’s end with Jude’s clingy behavior and tantrums that make him seem much younger than his age. She does her best to hide his issues from Bren, but can’t keep them a secret when Jude becomes terrified of the house, which he says doesn’t want them there and has an evil life inside its walls. Events start to make Elodie agree, and once she faces “a dark that picks its teeth with children’s bones,” readers will wonder who’s right—ever-more-terrified Elodie or fed-up, it’s-all-in-your-head Bren—and how this strange domestic puzzle can ever be worked out. A chilly, creepy, gripping tale by the award-winning author of Hazelthorn.
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