Natalie is a high achieving workaholic, always striving towards the next goal to be ticked off her list. Younger sister, Kit, is the opposite, drifting in life and frequently needing Nat to rescue her.
Six months ago, Kit went to Wisewood, a self-improvement program run on an isolated island in Maine. No contact with family or friends is allowed. Out of the blue, Nat receives an email from Wisewood that reads: ‘Would you like to come tell your sister what you did – or should we?’
Panicked that her darkest secret will be revealed and destroy her sister, Nat travels to Wisewood, where it’s made clear she’s not welcome. Nat feels she is being watched, her room being searched and she can’t find Kit. Is Wisewood a place of healing or is it a sinister cult?
Interspersed with Nat’s story is that of an unnamed girl who grows up with an abusive father who runs a sadistic training regime that aims to destroy fear and self-doubt. The identity of the girl is revealed mid-way through, adding a twist to the Wisewood story.
As well as being a page-turning thriller, this story offers interesting insight into the world of a cult, both the light – the sense of belonging and friendship – and the dark.
Reviewed by Melinda Woledge
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a kid in the suburbs of Chicago, I remember bringing a backpack to the library every two weeks during the summer and filling it to the brim. My favorites were Baby-Sitters Club, Nancy Drew, and the Thoroughbred series. I wrote a lot of stories too. My mom helped me type and add computer graphics to one called How Mary Ann Got Lost at the Zoo. Dark turns didn’t make their way into my writing until adulthood!) When I was eight or nine, I went through a serious horse phase – I was in the ninetieth percentile for height but convinced I would someday be a jockey – and wrote a 100-page book about them that thankfully never saw the light of day. But the older I got, the less creative writing I did. I’ve always wanted to write fiction, but doing it as a kid for fun was one thing; considering it as a profession was another. Being an author just didn’t seem like a realistic or practical career choice.
After college I worked as a copywriter for advertising agencies in Chicago. During this time, I wrote and helped produce television and radio spots, print ads, billboards, and digital campaigns for brands like Coors, McDonald’s, and Capital One.
In 2014 I moved to London, so my partner could attend business school. A year later, while I was between freelance copywriting jobs and in a rut, I applied to graduate schools for creative writing. It was the best decision I’ve ever made.
I moved to Boston to attend Emerson College in 2016. Before grad school, I would come up with a book idea, write a chapter or two, then give up. The MFA program made me take writing seriously for the first time. I had my first short story published in the Bellevue Literary Review and accrued 221 rejections for all the other stories I wrote and submitted. (It pains me to report that number is not an exaggeration.) By the end of the program, I’d finished my first novel, about a mother and daughter named Patty and Rose Gold Watts.
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