Book of Knives on October 4, 2022 Source: Review copy
Genres: Fiction / Crime, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Psychological, Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Pages: 320
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Unsettling, gripping, and totally original, Book of Knives is a literary thriller that shows how one person's unraveling can bring the whole house down.
There are thirteen knives. One by one they begin to disappear
Nora didn't expect Hidden Lake Camp to be in a state of ruin. Dock full of rotten boards, smashed windows, cabins falling apart. To her new husband, Paul, the camp is the past he'd just as soon bury. Nora agreed to drive north with him to get his elderly parents settled while he makes enough repairs to sell the property. Only a few months, Paul said. The summer camp, however, and its deep lake have other plans.
After Nora's first meal with his difficult family, one knife—part of a prized collection—goes missing. By the time the fourth and fifth vanish from behind locked doors and out from under watchful eyes, Nora can barely sleep. There's talk of ghosts, secret rooms and someone at the summer camp found dead in the tall grass.
I received this ARC as part of Miss Print’s ARC Exchange Program.”
Review:
Book of Knives is a literary thriller about 13 knives that mysteriously disappear, and no one knows how or why. It took me a while to get into the feel of this bizarre story about missing blades and a wife trying to move beyond the loss of her husband. Book of knives had a unique writing style, almost like a commentator rather than a character telling the story. The story is fast-paced, which helps with the suspense aspect, but we get very little detail about pauls family and why all the weirdness happens at the cabin. I think the story spent too much time with Nora analyzing her past with her first husband.
If you are looking for a quick short literary suspense that talks about ghosts, secret rooms, dead bodies, and missing knives, this might be just what you need.
About Lise Haines
LISE HAINES is the author of three novels, Girl in the Arena, Small Acts of Sex and Electricity (a Book Sense Pick in 2006 and one of ten “Best Book Picks for 2006” by the NPR station in San Diego), and In My Sister’s Country,, a finalist for the 2003 Paterson Fiction Prize. Her short stories and essays have appeared in a number of literary journals and she was a finalist for the PEN Nelson Algren Award.
Haines is Writer in Residence at Emerson College. She has been Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard, and her other teaching credits include UCLA, UCSB, and Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. She grew up in Chicago, lived in Southern California for many years, and now resides in the Boston area. She holds a B.A. from Syracuse University and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars.
