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The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
From an electrifying voice in horror comes the haunting tale of a woman whose life begins to unravel after a home invasion.

"Marino offers horrors both existential and visceral. From a stunning opening, the sense of dread just builds and builds." —M. R. Carey, author of The Girl with All the Gifts

"Odd and dark and fascinating . . . Not quite like anything I've ever read before. A strange, compelling, late-night page-turner. It kept me reading way past my bedtime." —T. Kingfisher, author of The Hollow Places
Possession is an addiction.

Sydney's spent years burying her past and building a better life for herself and her young son. A respectable marketing job, a house with reclaimed and sustainable furniture, and a boyfriend who loves her son and accepts her, flaws and all.

But when she opens her front door, and a masked intruder knocks her briefly unconscious, everything begins to unravel.

She wakes in the hospital and tells a harrowing story of escape. Of dashing out a broken window. Of running into her neighbors' yard and calling the police.

The cops tell her a different story. Because the intruder is now lying dead in her guest room—murdered in a way that looks intimately personal.

Sydney can't remember killing the man. No one believes her.

Back home, as horrific memories surface, an unnatural darkness begins whispering in her ear. Urging her back to old addictions and a past she's buried to build a better life for herself and her son.

As Sydney searches for truth among the wreckage of a past that won't stay buried for long, the unquiet darkness begins to grow. To change into something unimaginable.

To reveal terrible cravings of its own.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 24, 2021
      Marino makes his adult debut (after the Plot to Kill Hitler YA series) with an ambitious if slightly overstuffed psychological horror novel about a woman’s struggle to piece reality back together in the aftermath of an attack. Sydney Burgess, who has spent the past nine years maintaining sobriety and building a life with her son and boyfriend, is attacked and nearly murdered by a home intruder. When she recounts her narrow escape to the police, they give her a different timeline of events—one that ends with the intruder’s body found in her home, profoundly mutilated. Sydney doesn’t remember killing the man, much less desecrating his body in such a gruesome fashion. As a malevolent force grows within her and coaxes back old addictions, her life unravels and reality bends. Now Sydney must uncover the truth and confront the trauma of her past before it devours her. Marino does an impressive job writing tender and heartbreaking moments without sacrificing the brutal tone that drives the story. Though the time jumps and unreliable narration can feel erratic, the dreamy, nonlinear structure keeps things from becoming predictable. The novel juggles devices and themes it doesn’t always manage to catch, but when it works, it’s absolutely devastating. Agent: Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary.

    • Kirkus

      August 1, 2021
      After surviving a home invasion, Sydney Burgess begins to realize that there is something, literally, inside her--something malevolent. It's the setup to many a psychological thriller: A woman finds a masked stranger in her house. She manages to cut herself loose and escape. That's Sydney Burgess' first memory, anyway, when she awakens in the hospital, but then she learns that the intruder is dead. Stabbed 28 times, actually. Sydney has no memory of this brutality, but as she returns home with her boyfriend and 11-year-old son, she notices other strange things: posters that seem to drip from the walls, a mysterious mechanical toy. As a former addict now nine years sober, Sydney feels like she's living a double life at the best of times; as memories begin to resurface about the killing of the stranger, Sydney finds that there is something inside--a force, an entity, a power (it's unclear)--driving her to investigate him. Discovering messages from the murdered man to her boyfriend, she realizes that they are connected through a pharmaceutical company. Then, through flashbacks, it's revealed that Sydney, just like the stranger, has been part of an experiment meant to temper the memories of addiction. Instead, things continue to go horribly wrong until there is nothing but carnage and tragedy and a deep, deep darkness. The "science" of this novel is shady and slight, which makes it hard to understand what's really going on. The title conjures up a tradition of visitations both divine and demonic, yet the answer is decidedly unmystical, even if it is a bit mystifying. For a while, it even seems like the darkness inhabiting Sydney may be a metaphor for the haunts of addiction. Then, once things are "explained," the story really goes off the rails. Content to shock with gore and vague psychological discomfort.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      August 1, 2021
      This female-driven thriller is in the same vein as Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, and draws inspiration from the unreliable narrators of Dexter and Fight Club. The titular Sydney Burgess is recovering from a home invasion. She does not remember killing the intruder, and yet all signs point to her as the guilty party. Sydney plays the part of the narrator struggling to put the puzzle pieces together--who the intruder is and why she can't remember what happened--as her mind unravels faster than she can cope. The mind games intensify with law enforcement still highly suspicious of her, looming over her life like a black cloud. As she races to figure out the truth, the twists and turns of the plot lead Sydney to a conspiracy far bigger than she imagined. Readers who struggle with violence against women should be advised that the action gets brutal at times and the novel is very gritty. However, fans of domestic-suspense novels with psychological undertones, particularly admirers of the works of Tana French, Megan Abbott, and Zoje Stage, will devour this book.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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