Title: Lizzie
Author: Edward Rand
Publisher: Bloodchuckles Press
Pages: 594
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Dan and Beth move with their four-year-old
daughter, Lizzie, to a large house in a rural area. They get the house for a
steal, and the plan is that Dan, a real estate guy, will spruce up the house
and then sell it for a profit.
All is well for the first seven months until one
day when Dan finds himself lured to a deserted graveyard on a cycling trip on
his birthday. This is the first time he sees Barron Cemetery. This seemingly
harmless event invites their worst nightmare into their lives.
A series of unprovoked, bizarre and increasingly
horrible incidents begin to plague them. They realise that the cops aren’t
going to protect them, that the police are in fact in the employ of the
criminals. What’s more, all their friends and neighbours might be involved too.
The book is divided into five parts: Book 1 –
Animosity, Book 2 – The First Rule, Book 3 – Things That Should Not Be, Book 4
– Back to the Cemetery, Book 5 – The Binding and Book 6 – The Reaping. It is
written in the third person past tense PoV of Dan and Beth.
The author did a good job with the description of
the countryside, slowly building an aura of isolation and alarm. He also helps
us understand character motivation through the internal monologue of other
characters as much as through the dialogue and setting.
What I liked about the plot is that the action
doesn’t let up, continuing long after one thinks that peace has been restored.
In the beginning, I didn’t like Beth much. Dan
calling her a tigress once too often didn’t help matters much. It was only
after the plot progressed further and they faced their biggest challenge yet
that I began to warm towards them. Despite the anger they hold against each
other, we get a sense of the deep love they have for each other. Both of them
have had difficult pasts. Both have secrets they have hidden from each other
and from us.
Dan and Beth are both richly layered characters.
Both have meaty roles in this book. Both tend to act impulsively, and not
always wisely,
Dan referring to Arabic as “the flowing script used
by Al Jazeera whenever Al-Qaeda issued a proclamation in the name of their bloodthirsty
god, usually after slaughtering a batch of innocent people,” was in bad taste.
This issue is not as problematic when a minor character, with major prejudice,
refers to “Muslim heathens” because then it fits her character.
There is a lot of swearing and bad language in the
book, that I found distasteful. There were lots of descriptions of sex, written
primarily like a male fantasy. “He couldn’t go any deeper. There wasn’t
room” sounded puerile.
One error was when Abdulla was referred to as a
Sikh. Abdulla is not a Sikh name. It is a Muslim name. Get your facts right
before forcing diversity into your story.
It’s a long book, but also a long nightmare. Even so,
the book could have been thinner. A lot of it was in the internal monologues of
the two main characters, especially with both of them dancing around the main
issue.
I liked the book, but was disappointed with the
conclusion. The only way in which it might make sense is if the author were to
announce a sequel. Also, what was the point in calling this book, Lizzie, when
most of it was about Dan and Beth?
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