Title: The Day of the Door

Author: Laurel Hightower

Release date: April 23rd, 2024

*Huge thanks to Laurel for sending me a digital ARC!*

When one of your favorite authors announces they have a book coming out, you get excited, you preorder it and then you patiently wait for the release day to devour it. In this case, I was lucky enough to jump the release day window when Laurel kindly sent me an ARC (though to be fair, I kind of subtlety whined about it on FB, when I said I was jealous a buddy of mine had already read it and Laurel DM’d me! And I stand by jealousy from that time, HA!!).

Everything about this one screamed to me that it would destroy me. Trevor Henderson cover. Check. A sibling dying under mysterious circumstances. Check. Laurel Hightower writing it. Check. Everything Laurel writes is gold, but sometimes, like in this case, its gold wrapped in golden gold. What I mean is, this one was solid gold.

What I liked: The story that unfolds within focuses on Nathan Lasco and the surviving siblings who have lived all these years after their brother died. While nothing had ever been confirmed, they all believe it was their mother who killed him, behind that closed door, though she’s always insisted a malevolent entity was behind his death.

When Nathan finds out that a film crew wants to get them all back together, the kids and his estranged mom, he hopes things will finally come out and a confession can be obtained.

It’s from this point on that Hightower gives us one of the most infuriating, gas-lighting and self-centered bitch of a character you’ll ever read. Not since Caitlin Marceau’s ‘This Is Where We Talk Things Out’ have I been this frustrated and a big part of that is just how fucking accurate the depiction within of the mother is. She’s one of those people who suck you dry, slurp the energy from the room and somehow make you feel bad and that you’re the one who did everything, not her. Time and time again, literally in every single paragraph that she appears in – and many where she’s being mentioned – this character ignites a fury in the reader and will piss you off so much that you want to just scream at the top of your lungs for somebody to walk over to her and just smack the shit out of her.

Hightower nails this character, and typically, knowing how she operates, this character is based off someone specific, which ramps up that fury and passionate dislike even more.

Nathan himself is a very complicated character, one who you both feel for but also wish he’d get things together. He comes off as a guy who is willing to try and turn things around, but not willing to go all the way, other than his firm belief that nothing paranormal occurred all those years ago. That is, until the repressed memories start to return and we get snippets of a darkness that walked the hallways and lurked in the corners.

Between the anger that the mother creates in the reader and the sheer terror Hightower creates throughout, this novel had me hooked and hooked hard. It was something that called to me when I wasn’t reading it and I love when a book does that.

The ending of the events and the revelation of what really happened was both cathartic and horrifying and really worked well to show the bond of the siblings, who they themselves were solid, if not secondary characters, but to also answer the question about whether this was a haunting or not.

What I didn’t like: While Nathan’s boss/crush was a solid character, I wasn’t really sold on her ending aspect within the novel. I can’t share more than that, for spoilers, but her role was great otherwise, I just don’t know if it was a way to try and utilize her in the future for a second book, which it kind of felt like.

Why you should buy this: Hightower never holds back from unleashing terror and this is yet another reason why she’s a must-read author for me. From start to finish this rips along and as the lights dim and the stairs creak, she does a wonderful job of scaring the shit out of the reader. All while making them want to slap that person who gaslights them in real life, because we can’t slap this fictional mother.

Which is such a shame.

5/5