April 24, 2023
Larocca (We Can Never Leave This Place) hinges the plot of his disappointing latest on the farfetched premise that God is a glowing orb of energy sequestered in the basement of a Connecticut mansion, waiting for Heart Crowley, the mansion’s devious owner, to return it to Heaven. At least that’s what Crowley tells grieving widower Ghost Everling. Crowley has been abducting locals from the town of Henley’s Edge to act as sacrifices in this obscure scheme to no avail, but believes that in skeptical Ghost he’s found the perfect supplicant. Larocca’s tale unfolds with the promise of a classic small-town horror story, but it frequently bogs down in purple prose: one character walks out of the room on another, “abandoning him the way napalm-scented civilians would single-file march from their burning homelands, forming a glorious diaspora”; another despairs to find “her mind, once a lavish rose bed, now reduced to an emptying gutter that swine wouldn’t even consider drinking from.” Combined with a (literal) deus ex machina ending, this book is strictly for the author’s most dedicated fans. Agent: Priya Doraswamy, Lotus Lane Literary.
September 1, 2023
LaRocca's (They Were Here Before Us) first full-length novel offers listeners equal doses of small-town terror and cosmic horror. Henley's Edge is a small Connecticut village with some unusual residents. Its most unsettling resident is Heart Crowley, an enigmatic man who knows real magic and has a nefarious plan in mind. However, the horrors seen by police officer Nadeem Malik are more terrestrial: a rash of missing-persons cases he's investigating, and violent homophobic attacks directed towards him and those he loves. That means it might be up to recently widowed Ghost Everling to stop Crowley. The novel almost feels like two stories on parallel tracks: Ghost trying to outwit Crowley, and Malik trying to protect his family. The cosmic horrors and seemingly idyllic setting of Henley's Edge feel like Stephen King in his prime, while the extreme brutality and human-sourced horrors that are seen in Malik's plotline will make listeners cringe. Throughout the novel, Andr� Santana's narration breathes life into all the characters, particularly likable everyman Ghost and seductively sinister Crowley. VERDICT Two terrifying storylines come together in an inventive and haunting tale that explores whether love and forgiveness can exist in a pitiless universe.--James Gardner
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