Title: The
Chrysalis
Author: Brendan
Deneen
Synopsis: “Welcome
to the dark side of suburbia.
“Barely
employed millennials Tom and Jenny Decker have to grow up fast when they lose
their cheap Manhattan apartment. Leaving
“the city” is hard, but the blow is softened when they stumble upon a
surprisingly affordable house in the suburbs.
“For Tom, the
bills, the mortgage, and Jenny’s unexpected pregnancy add up to terror. He’s not ready for this kind of
responsibility.
“Then he finds
the thing in the basement. It makes him
feel like a winner even as it scrambles his senses. A new job soon has him raking in the big
bucks – enough that Jenny can start making her entrepreneurial dreams come
true.
“The Deckers’
dream home conceals more than one deadly secret. As Tom’s obsession with the basement grows,
Jenny realizes that to save her family, she must expose everything. Before it destroys them all.
“No one ever
really wants to grow up… but sometimes behaving like an adult is the only way
to survive.”
Review: The story starts
out with a brutal murder, and then cuts to a stereotypical millennial couple
moving to the suburb. The Chrysalis is
engaging enough that I found myself thinking about it when I was doing other
things. While reading the first half of
the novel I didn’t have a problem putting it down when my reading time was over
and I had to do other things, like make dinner or go to work. The second half of the novel I could not put
down. I read it in one go, at bedtime,
and then couldn’t sleep because I was afraid that I was going to have
nightmares.
***It’s a new
release, so I won’t post any major spoilers.
But there are a few minor ones below.***
At first I
felt bad for the characters, especially Tom.
He gives up a lot to provide for his little family and it had to be
hard. In his mind he is basically
selling out by taking the sales job that allows him to be a provider. And Jenny, getting fired from her job just
when she finds out that she is pregnant, is dealt what had to be a devastating
blow emotionally. Things go from bad to
worse when Tom discovers the chrysalis in the basement. I’m going to admit that it took me a long
time to realize that the chrysalis in the basement symbolizes addiction, and that
the whole novel is about how addiction can ruin your life.
The Chrysalis
is scary enough that it kept me awake at night, and it made me feel kind of
queasy. Which, for a horror novel, means
that it did its job. If you aren’t
jumping at shadows and uncomfortable after reading a horror novel, did you
really read a horror novel?
***I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley
in exchange for an honest review***
Publisher: Tor
If you like this book you may want to read:
The Hunger by Alma Katsu
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
