The timeframe of the novel jumps around. I thought this would be annoying or I would get confused, but this actually helped to create unease and suspicion. Ted seems like a sympathetic father at first, with a deep fear of his daughter being hurt. However, as the story progresses their house seems more and more wrong. Ominous and threatening. Also, you begin to wonder where Lauren goes when she is not at home with Ted. Ted is an unreliable narrator, you are not sure what is happening within the house. He is often drunk, and blacks out from time to time. He is worried about his health and hopes to find someone to help care for his daughter (should anything happen to him), but he is also disgusted by himself and fears no one will ever want to help him. He degrades himself often. The cat, Olivia, is adorably feisty and reads the bible. She thinks very highly of herself and loves being a cat. She reveals a lot about Ted and, probably, the most accurate information you receive about the house. She also seems a little bit delusional. Lauren is an emotional child, continuously tearing at Ted, hurting him, angry, and pushes boundaries. The house itself is a character within this novel, with its boarded up windows and stacks of old items. The ballerina music box, the photo of his family at the lake, the Matryoshka doll that terrifies Ted. The doll reflects the entire novel, the layers, depths, hidden things. The secrets Ted keeps about himself, his mother, his home. The house becomes even more important as the story progresses, as items shift and change within it, as Olivia moves about, as Lauren rides her pink bicycle around the living room. What is it about this house that does not seem right, what is going on with the attack and the basement? Outside of Ted's story, there is Dee. A young woman in search of her sister who went missing at the lake eleven years ago. She is consumed with the need to find her, or find the person who took her. But, she is also broken, damaged by everything that took place and the aftershocks of it all. Her family fell apart and she is trying desperately to hold herself together. She also has a deep seated fear of snakes, which manifested that day at the lake when she was confronted with snakes in the water. The snakes play a key role in Dee's relationship with her sisters disappearance, their ability to hide, to strike. Dee and Ted's worlds collide when she finds an old article about her sister and a photo of Ted in connection to his house being searched. A lot of this book is about two children who experienced horrific events and how they build up a story in order to deal with the trauma they are too scared to confront. It is about the influence of a parent and the power of the mind to protect itself from danger. It is also a book about perception, about how a story's telling can lead you to believe something, or how our own prejudices can make us think something that is completely wrong about a person. This book was unsettling in the best ways, and I highly recommend it for mystery and horror fans alike. Thank you so much to Tor Nightfire for giving me the eArc in exchange for an honest review.
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