The Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling (2025)
When this book finally unveils the ooey-gooey body horrors that it's been hinting at all along, it's a true nightmare inducing funhouse of blood, corrupted flesh and a variety of oozing fluids dripping in all directions.
But getting there is not the half the fun. It's kind a tedious slog, and as we suffer through the lead character's endless, agonizing hospital stay, it's a toss up as to who's enduring the most pain.....her or us.
Afflicted with a rare autoimmune deficiency, Margaret agrees to a fully covered experimental treatment that might cure her....or maybe do something not discussed in the pamphlets. . This involves a lengthy hospital stay with beyond agonizing doses of medication that will destroy her immune system and then hopefully rebuilt it to full strength.
Well, that's the theory, anyway......feel to break into an evil smile and cackle.
What follows for Meg, as we knew it would, is a Kafka-esque plunge into perpetual medical torture, with the added fear that something's not quite right about this hospital......something sinister and terrible that's just out of sight but most assuredly there.....or is it?
The book whips up a palpable, suffocating atmosphere of dread, but then lets it drag on and on and on.......it goes from scaring us silly to just wearing us out, praying for either a sedative or a gory wind-up that finally lets us see what Meg's dealing with.
Yes, 'The Graceview Patient' does, at long last, let fly with a doozy of a finish designed to leave a reader with enough bad dreams to last till the end of next year. But the time it takes to get there feels like waiting in an emergency room with 300 patients and only one intern who just graduated medical school yesterday.......
I'm guessing horror fans won't be able to resist checking into Graceview Hospital in the hopes that it's like the Bates Motel with I.V. drips and bedpans. In its final pages, we must say, it does not disappoint. Author Caitlin Starling delivers the shivers well enough.........if you're willing to wait for them.
But getting there is not the half the fun. It's kind a tedious slog, and as we suffer through the lead character's endless, agonizing hospital stay, it's a toss up as to who's enduring the most pain.....her or us.
Afflicted with a rare autoimmune deficiency, Margaret agrees to a fully covered experimental treatment that might cure her....or maybe do something not discussed in the pamphlets. . This involves a lengthy hospital stay with beyond agonizing doses of medication that will destroy her immune system and then hopefully rebuilt it to full strength.
Well, that's the theory, anyway......feel to break into an evil smile and cackle.
What follows for Meg, as we knew it would, is a Kafka-esque plunge into perpetual medical torture, with the added fear that something's not quite right about this hospital......something sinister and terrible that's just out of sight but most assuredly there.....or is it?
The book whips up a palpable, suffocating atmosphere of dread, but then lets it drag on and on and on.......it goes from scaring us silly to just wearing us out, praying for either a sedative or a gory wind-up that finally lets us see what Meg's dealing with.
Yes, 'The Graceview Patient' does, at long last, let fly with a doozy of a finish designed to leave a reader with enough bad dreams to last till the end of next year. But the time it takes to get there feels like waiting in an emergency room with 300 patients and only one intern who just graduated medical school yesterday.......
I'm guessing horror fans won't be able to resist checking into Graceview Hospital in the hopes that it's like the Bates Motel with I.V. drips and bedpans. In its final pages, we must say, it does not disappoint. Author Caitlin Starling delivers the shivers well enough.........if you're willing to wait for them.
3 stars (***).
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