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Horror/Thriller Book Club March Pick: The Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling

9 Apr

March’s read for the Hoboken Public Library’s Horror/Thriller book club was part unhinged, grotesque imagery, and unreliable sanity. The Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling enticed our group with its synopsis hindering the instinctual defenses to survive at any cost.

Book cover for The Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling. The design features a pale, textured background with a classical stone archway. Above the arch is a statue of a woman leaning and with her head tilted. Inside the arch is a red, window opening with a dark silhouette of a person standing. The title appears in large red lettering at the top, and the author’s name is written at the bottom.

When you have perhaps one last thread to save your existence, in this case an experimental medical procedure that destroys your immune system so that it can be rebuilt, how many of us would be tempted not to take the risk? That’s the moral conundrum that ticks on every page. 

When that primal instinct comes in play, for me that’s what truly makes the horror genre great, and Caitlin Starling blends an unreliable narrator mixed with imagery and angst of the COVID-19 pandemic all left to fester in a petri dish of suffering and sly corporate slouthing and conniving. 

Some parts are slow, the protagonist gets too in the weeds with her thoughts and her second guessing sometimes goes over the top. Then again, if walls were coming alive and floors eating people all mixed with the hospital living, breathing, and speaking to me, I’d probably be this way, too. 

Margaret (Meg) Carpenter has a severe  immune disorder that has destroyed her insides, allowing her to do very little and maintain almost no relationships (personal and professional). Her life is falling apart and she’s destitute. She will latch onto anything, including her nurses and the nightly cleaning crew. 

My heart was strung tight for the majority of this book, but it also somehow found a way to be thankful – thankful for what hospital staff and the medical community must endure to keep us safe – the terror of dealing with patients that are so sick or in desperate positions that they morph the world around them. 

In the end, it’s a radical commentary on the blending of medical ethics and extreme treatment that blurs the line of how far we may be willing to go in our loss of agency to save our lives.

Interested in the Horror/Thriller Book Club? Please email reference@hobokenlibrary.org, or register for our next meeting by searching under Events on our website.

Have you read The Graceview Patient? What did you think? Comment below.

You can reserve it in the BCCLS system here, or access the ebook and audiobook on Hoopla.

Hit subscribe to get more Hoboken Public Library Staff Picks delivered to your inbox!

Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant

Tags: ,

Cult and Commune Thriller: A Mother Always Knows by Sarah Strohmeyer

2 Apr

There’s something primal and untethered to be expected from A Mother Always Knows. The cover entices being watched, and the synopsis unsettles with horror rooted in folk lore. This was the Hoboken Public Library’s Horror/Thriller Book Club February pick.

Book cover for A Mother Always Knows by Sarah Strohmeyer. A cloaked figure with antlers stands in a dark forest with a glowing light behind them. The title is in bold green with occult symbols. A pentagram replaces the "O" in "KNOWS". A stream runs through the foreground.

Stella O’Neill is working at the local public library, and no one suspects she’s living under an assumed name, a tactic to keep herself hidden after witnessing her mother’s murder as a ten-year-old in a Vermont cult. The crime is still unsolved, but when her peace is upended, she is forced to flee Boston and revisit the fear of the cult she grew up in. She heads to the off-the-grid retreat to confront the leader and guru, Radcliffe MacBeath. Stella has both determination and a supernatural gift guiding her to outwit the charismatic leader and uncover the identity of her mother’s killer.

The book delivers a first-person suspense story that, while lacking a bit in its promise of terror through forced community and tradition, delivers on a few heart-wrenching scenes of close quarters and manipulated folklore ready to repeat itself.

I’ll admit, we were a bit fooled, but I say this so that you, the reader, can set your expectations. Here is the question the story actually presents: What do we actually want from the people we meet through our lives, authenticity or belonging, and do these two go hand-in-hand?

Imperfection is human, and this story’s protagonist, Stella, certainly has her flaws, including the troubling tendency to fall into traps of her own making. The effect is more “why would anyone do that?” But hindsight is twenty-twenty, and perhaps if we were in the situation Stella finds herself in, anxiety constantly pumping and fear forever looming, we too wouldn’t realize these blind spots.

What struck me most were the recurring patterns in the story that showed the cult’s cold hands holding its members.

The author includes sharp one-liners and some self-aware comedy to break the tension, though it sometimes deflates it. But humor under pressure is a very real human response, so in that sense, the effort is worthy. A Mother Always Knows achieves a different type of thrill that one of our readers put’s perfectly:
“A Mother Always Knows felt like a horror novel written by someone who only cared about a twist. After investing so much time into the cult, we’re left with an ending straight out of Scooby Doo.” – Michael Schmidt

For readers who prefer their suspense stories character-driven and with much internal monologue, this book may be for you. I finished A Mother Always Knows, and I’m a bit uncertain about the answer to its question, but then again, with these types of stories, uncertainty can be intentional. This story is for readers who want tension presented efficiently through different POV lenses in a first-person thriller, who don’t necessarily need their horror ancestrally folkish or Manson-esque.

Interested in the Horror/Thriller Book Club? Please email reference@hobokenlibrary.org, or register for our next meeting by searching under Events on our website.

Have you read A Mother Always Knows? What did you think? Comment below.

You can reserve it in the BCCLS system here, or access the ebook and audiobook on Hoopla.

Hit subscribe to get more Hoboken Public Library Staff Picks delivered to your inbox!

Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant

Tags: ,

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