Sweet Damage

December 15, 2014
For the soon-to-be-homeless Tim, the opportunity seems too good to be true: a spacious room in a lavish mansion for only $100 per week! The only hitch: he must perform the occasional errand for the house's owner, 20-year-old Anna, who is agoraphobic, and, thus, housebound. No worries there, and he is soon ensconced in his new digs. But then strange things begin to happen: he finds his room filled with spiders; strange figures begin appearing in the night; a message of death appears scrawled on a wall in paint the color of blood. And Anna? Well, beautiful, withdrawn Anna remains an enigma, but Tim finds himself drawn to her; however, is she the one responsible for the, well, incidents? The questions are ultimately resolved in a not terribly surprising denouement. Indeed, though billed as a psychological thriller, the book is long on the former and stingy on the latter, the thrills sometimes undone by a too-poky pace. That aside, there are some surprises, and the characters are appealingand, in one case, awfulenough to keep the pages turning. Give this one an E for effort.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2014

Having won international fame with her novel Beautiful Malice, Australian author James returns with more over-the-top psychological suspense. Tim Ellison is thrilled to have found the ideal room to rent, though 20-year-old landlady Anna London is cold, distant, and fragile despite her youth. It's scary when things start going bump in the night, even scarier when Tim falls for Anna and her past comes into play.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.