Sundial

Starred review from January 10, 2022
With this masterful horror novel, Ward (The Last House on Needless Street) weaves a seething, hallucinatory tale of family, death, and hereditary trauma that will keep readers guessing all the way to the devastating conclusion. Rob has spent years distancing herself from Sundial, her enigmatic childhood home nestled deep in the Mojave Desert, finding comfort and normalcy in playing the role of dutiful wife and mother of two. But when her haunted, volatile daughter, Callie, shows signs that she might be heir to the horrors that Rob has spent so long trying to escape, Rob and Callie must venture back into the Mojave to exorcise the ghosts of Rob’s past before they destroy her family’s future. Ward’s brilliance lies in how she explicates the innate bizarreness of a child’s experience of the world and explores the small cruelties that families are uniquely capable of visiting upon one another through intimacies accumulated and treated as ammunition. The queasy narrative gives its characters plenty of space to explore their unreal circumstances without ever sacrificing momentum, and while the ending skillfully ties together the many threads, it never offers easy answers. This is a must-read for fans of gothic literature and taut psychological thrillers.

June 1, 2022

The newest from Ward (The Last House on Needless Street) explores familial bonds, lingering traumas, and violent legacies. Rob tries to be a good wife and mother to her daughters, despite her abusive, philandering husband and his constant power games, but Rob notices daughter Callie's peculiar behaviors and is horrified by what she's done to her younger sister Annie. To help Callie and save Annie, Rob takes Callie to the desert, to Sundial, her now-abandoned childhood home. While Rob remembers what events at Sundial led her to what she must do now, young Callie worries that this will be her last trip. The story, with its many twists and turns, alternates between Callie and Rob and jumps between past and present. Readers will never be entirely sure what is going on until the end but will nevertheless be drawn into this book's inescapable narrative web. Narrator Katherine Fenton imbues each syllable with tension and unease. VERDICT A masterful example of suspense; audiences will love their trip to Sundial, even as the sands shift constantly beneath their feet.--James Gardner

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