finished reading

 

I wanted to love this book.  But it was a bit draggy, and through flashbacks in the dual narrative timeline, the reader gained knowledge before the main character, Olivia, which confused me--I had a hard time keeping track of what Olivia knew as she delved into her family's complicated past.  Using the literary technique of the reader knowing more than Olivia and watching her struggle to catch up started to feel more frustrating than suspenseful.

I liked Olivia's backstory, how her estrangement from her father unfolded, as well as the current predicament she finds herself in through cancel culture.  Her desperation was palpable.  And her complex relationship with her father, Vincent Taylor, a very famous horror writer dealing with Lewy Body Dementia, was well developed.  The horror element of her father's work reflects the horror of the family's secrets:  what actually happened to Danny and Poppy, and how Vincent survives.

From the publisher:

In June 1975 the Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets.

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she's offered a job to ghostwrite her father's last book. What she doesn't know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies—because it's not another horror novel he wants her to write.