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(Full review 4/29/18)

Freaky. As. Hell. At only 150-some large-print pages, this should probably be read in one sitting for maximum effect, the spell shouldn't be broken (I read nearly all of it last night and finished it just now). The momentum just keeps carrying you forward, making it hard to stop even if you wanted. Brilliant. Full review to come.
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A woman named Amanda lies feverish and dying in a hospital bed, and she has no idea how she got there. A young boy is her only companion, whispering in her ear, guiding her to some important moment that she needs to remember. Something to do with worms. Getting inside her. She tells him the story of the past few days, reliving the seconds as if they were happening in the present. She recounts vacationing with her young daughter in a small town, where she (Amanda) becomes friends with a woman next door who has a frightening story about how her little boy is not really her little boy: he looks just like her son, but he's something else entirely.

Wondering how all this leads to Amanda's current dying state is what keeps the reader turning the pages. Not only that, but there's an underlying creepiness throughout, embedded within the pages. There were several times when I was majorly freaked-out even when nothing scary was happening on the surface. There's just an eeriness to the prose itself that slowly grows and grows, which separates this from a typical well-told horror story, and trying to figure out just what the hell was going on made me stay up til 5:30 in the morning to try and finish it (alas, I had to finish the last few pages a few hours later when I woke up, which thankfully didn't ruin the effect).

Highly recommended for fans of literary horror, or for anyone in the mood for a perfectly-paced mystery with ambiguous supernatural goings-on.

4.5 Stars.