Maplecroft

Today's post is on Maplecroft by Cherie Priest. It is the first in her Borden Dispatches series. The cover is beautiful; it has Lizzie Borden with her ax in the center standing in a doorway. It is 435 pages long and is published by ROC. The intended reader is someone who likes Lovecraft, horror, and just some really good writing. There is language, sex, and violence in this novel. The story is told in first person of the character's moving from chapter to chapter. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one....
The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny.
But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean’s depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness.
This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.

Review- This is one of the best written books I have read all year. I am very serious. Everything about this book is so good. The plot, the pacing, the setting, the characters, there it nothing I would change. Epistolary novels are so hard to do well but Priest owns this. In horror one common thing is to stop the reader or watcher from seeing too much but Priest instead makes it like an onion. Layers are peeled back slowly so that the horror just builds. The horror is very Lovecraftain, very slow to build but like the tide coming in, it will pull you under. The sex is not overdone and very tasteful. The violence is there but it is not overwhelming. I just enjoyed this book so much. I cannot wait to read the second one Chapelwood.

I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I was given this book as a gift.