The Cut

Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for the audiobook arc. Shoutout to the continued CJ supremacy from my fellows. Jenn Lee did a solid job with the audio, really nailing the submissive tone as well as the more solid-ground surety from later in the novel.

I’ve got to be honest, I found myself slipping during a slow day at work and was actually reading some reviews. That’s something I never do. I had already started it, so I guess I was just curious. For whatever reason, probably some Goodreads algorithm, some of the mid-negative reviews were toward the top. People claiming it wasn’t a horror, that it didn’t deliver…and I found this interesting (interesting enough to include in a review—even though the overall vibe of the book is not at all negative FYI) because it really didn’t match up with my experience. Sometimes when you aren’t getting along with a story you check the reviews and see people felt the same and it clicks. This was not that.

When Sadie finds out she’s pregnant, she knows there’s no way in hell she’s raising her child and newborn with an abusive partner. It’s the kick in the butt she’s needed to flee. Through mild planning that’s more shove-what-we-can-in-a-suitcase, she and her daughter end up outside the L’Arpin

Hotel on Erie Lake. As we can expect from a setup like this, a desperate job interview leads to new work and a place to lay low for a while. But as Sadie cleans the hotel (while an unsuspecting elderly live-in watches her daughter) she begins to question things at every turn. From seeing someone struggling in the pool, to a tentacled nuisance in the shower, things continue to get more and more odd and no one seems to be taking her seriously.

I felt that the novel really nailed the submissive personality. The abused person’s need to apologize and explain away. To accept things you’d never accept otherwise. The continuous self-sabotaging thoughts and self blame. As a person with anxiety, the train of thought felt familiar in a way, and I think the author really sold it as a layer in the novel that made each experience of Sadie’s more complex. Does she do, think, and accept things that may appear repetitive or even annoying? Absolutely. But that being engrained as her ‘normal’ is pivotal to her story. And I love a good story that can hit home on how horrific normal life and humans can be.

From there, this does have an almost cosmic twist to its horror. It reminded me of The Sundowner’s Dance in the sense that the climax also functions as a creature feature. And while your opinion on the ending is yours to feel however you’d like, this is where I really disagreed with those reviews I read. The audiobook I received was around 10 hours. The climax itself was over an hour long. For me that certainly delivers. I didn’t think it was short or underwhelming. It could have upped the gore for me, but I don’t think that was what the author was going for.

A creeping, slithering slow burn of a cosmic horror.