Megan Collins | BEHIND THE RED DOOR

Plot (via Goodreads):

When Fern Douglas sees the news about Astrid Sullivan, a thirty-four-year-old missing woman from Maine, she is positive that she knows her. Fern’s husband is sure it’s because of Astrid’s famous kidnapping—and equally famous return—twenty years ago, but Fern has no memory of that, even though it happened an hour outside her New Hampshire hometown. And when Astrid appears in Fern’s recurring nightmare, one in which a girl reaches out to her, pleading, Fern fears that it’s not a dream at all, but a memory.

Back home in New Hampshire, Fern purchases a copy of Astrid’s recently published memoir—which may have provoked her original kidnapper to abduct her again—and as she reads through its chapters and visits the people and places within it, she discovers more evidence that she has an unsettling connection to the missing woman. As Fern’s search becomes increasingly desperate, she hopes to remember her past so she can save Astrid in the present…before it’s too late.

Review:

Megan Collins is one of those authors who will just relentlessly grab a hold of you from the first page and tighten her squeeze with every single plot point. This novel is haunting, psychologically chilling, and very well paced. Mixing in a characters anxiety to create almost an unreliable narrator was not only something that was effective, but very well explained as Collins effortlessly weaves Fern's past in with the present story-line. Megan Collins can write. Megan Collins books will stick to your ribs.

If you took the setting of Pet Sematary and combined it with characters from Harper Lee, but tossed in a bone-chilling plot of Karin Slaughter, you would get Behind the Red Door. There is a certain Rob Zombie remake of a very popular holiday-themed movie in which a character barely survives the first movie, only to be brutally murdered in the second. For some reason that sticks with me so much because what are the chances of something that horrible happened twice in a lifetime? The minute I sunk my teeth into this novel, I got the same chills. This novel has some seriously creepy moments in it and I love how Collins can scare the hell out of me with little-to-no gore. Her writing is seamless, the characters are vivid and disturbing, and the plot incredibly creeped me out. By the time the ending came around, I was ready for answers and I was left feeling satisfied, scared, and anxious for Collins' third book.

One thing that I loved about this was the combination of folklore and the way that Collins played off the setting. First of all, she created this town that you can perfectly imagine in your head and she played off the eeriness of the woods, a missing girl, and even a witch chant. If you want a novel that will wrap you in its embrace and chill you to the core, then I highly suggest you dive in and see what's Behind the Red Door.

Special thanks to Atria for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: 5/5