The Retreat

Starred review from June 24, 2019
This captivating thriller from Smith (Follow Me Down) finds former child star Katie Manning, whose long-running hit TV series ended when she was 15, now 27, “the age when celebrities died from their bad habits.” She shares her New York townhouse with her brother and his herbal tea–drinking, yoga practicing fiancée, Ellie Rose, whose lifestyle is an anathema to the hard-drinking party animal that Katie has become. In order to appease her brother, while still hoping to wreck his engagement, Katie agrees to attend a wellness retreat with Ellie, but insists on taking her two old college friends along. When a guest at the retreat vanishes, and Katie wakes up next to a bloody knife, the novel blossoms with layers of subterfuge, murky motives and contiguous crimes. Who will make it through the wellness retreat alive? With each new tantalizing detail that Smith surreptitiously reveals about the characters, the reader’s perception of them changes. Prose that zings with amusing metaphors and wry wit drives this exhilarating roller-coaster ride. Agent: Louise Fury, Bent Agency.

July 1, 2019
Canadian author Smith credits long, cold winters as her dark muse, and her second novel (after Follow Me Down, 2017) is a compelling manifestation of that muse at work. Once-beloved child star Katie Manning, desperately lost in a radically altered reality all her own, decides to seek inner peace at a holistic retreat center in the Catskills. The invitation is issued by her brother's fianc�e, who appears to be the only sane person in the group, patiently driving Katie with two of her troubled companions along a road to wellness that slowly and horrifyingly transforms into a highway to hell, once they arrive at the Sanctuary, where their inner demons are released. This book could well have been called The Last Girl Standing, as bitter verbal assaults escalate into physical combat, and the once-cutesy teen television detective Katie finds herself cast in a deadly reality show. Fans of the genre will enjoy their favorite dish, served not just cold, but organic, perfectly in keeping with Thackeray's characterization, "Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)