3 Stars

I will start off by saying my huge intrigue to this book was mainly it being compared to Night Shyamalan’s movie Village. I watched that movie for the first time when I was 13 and for some reason fell in love with it. I do agree that it has similar elements to it and I think that’s why I enjoyed this book so much.

This book is about Travis who has an unusual talent for locating missing people just by touching an object belonging to the person who has vanished. He takes on the unusual case of finding Maggie St. James, an author that writes dark children’s books and is pretty well-known. Travis is lured to a place called Pastoral, a reclusive community of people wanting to live a simpler life but when he arrives, he disappears, just like Maggie did. Years later his truck is found abandoned by Theo, a lifelong member of the community. No one is allowed into the community and no one is allowed out, otherwise they may catch the disease. Theo starts to dig into all these disappearances from this mysterious place only to find it isn’t as safe as they all believe.

This book a little confusing to me at times but the more I read into it the more I began to understand. It’s so twisty and there’s a constant feeling of underlying dread that grips you into the story and also gives you the creeps. Shea Ernshaw is known to write dark, atmospheric books and this book definitely hit it on the head. She didn’t just dip her toes into adult writing, she dove headfirst and I’m very impressed with the story she created. Her writing style is always so beautiful to me that no matter what genre she writes, I’m going to read it.

While this book wasn’t a knock me out of the park read, I did enjoy reading it and it was definitely entertaining. I hope she continues to write more adult books in the future.

Thanks to Atria Books for the copy for my review.