On the Lighter Side ~ The Perils of Parenthood

Tags

Momma Bear Struggles With Cubs, On the Lighter Side, ViralHog

Paradox Lake, By Vincent Zandri ~ 3.0 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Rape, Rape of a Child, Serial Killers

Thanks to Edelweiss and Oceanview Publishing for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review review.

Release Date: May 18th, 2021

336 Pages

Synopsis: Sculptor and single mom, Rose Conley, is haunted by her tragic past and anxious about he uncertain future. She needs to get away from it all. On sabbatical from the college where she teaches art, she and her daughter rent a house for three months in the Adirondack lakeside community of Paradox.

Rose desperately needs time alone with her twelve-year-old daughter before the teenage years hit. In the wake of the premature deaths of her oldest daughter, Allison, and her husband, Charlie, Rose wants nothing more than to nurture Anna every moment she can.

But idyllic Paradox Lake transforms into a nightmare when a monster from the past, invades Rose’s retreat—and targets her daughter for his own special brand of horror.

I really loved the premise of Paradox Lake, but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. For a horror story, I thought the first 40% of the book dragged and I was getting impatient for some action to kick in. This was made worse by the awkward dialogue between Rose and twelve-year-old Anna whose mother-daughter relationship I just didn’t find believable. It seems to be one those cases of a male writer attempting to the capture the POV of a female and not succeeding, and young Anna’s voice was even less believable. What Vincent Zandri does incredibly well here though, is conveying a monstrous evil that is so palpable it was actually quite terrifying, and he uses the background of Little Red Riding Hood creatively and with chilling effect. There are some scenes that are graphically gory and made even me cringe (which takes a lot), and the ending was completely crackers in pure slasher fashion. Because of this I’m giving Paradox Lake 3 Stars. I want to give fair warning though that this has several scenes which could trigger certain readers including: Rape, rape of a child, and the murder of a child. For me, while this wasn’t a perfect read, there was enough there that has me interested in checking out some of Zandri’s other books.