Subscriber Special: Nowhere - Allison Gunn
And you thought it would never happen
A Book Mail on an off week? Whatever could that mean?
That’s right: we’ve got our very first Subscriber Special! I was asked by a friend to read Nowhere for the newsletter when it came out and as Nowhere had its pub date back in March, let’s explore it!
One of the nicest things about having my first subscriber special choice be from a good friend is they knew exactly what is up my alley. When my buddy Acorn sent this to me as his choice, I read the back and went “…so I one hundred percent would have read this regardless.”
The set up is that we are in a small Virginia town in, basically, the middle of nowhere. Folks don’t really come to or leave this place much, everyone knowing each other for generations. Except for our protagonists, the Kennan family.
Three years ago, they moved here from Richmond, Rachel taking over as Chief of Police. But last year there was a terrible accident, Finn crashing into the river (while drunk) with their two youngest in the car and their only son, Aidan, was lost. The marriage is now barely hanging on by a thread, Charlie (a young teen) is acting out, Lucy (the youngest) has been seeing a therapist for ages, and the whole town has found out Rachel is queer, not exactly the kind of thing a small Virginia town is super supportive of. Not to mention the overwhelming drug problems.
Yeah, things pretty much suck.
And then Rachel finds a body nailed to a tree in the middle of the forest.
This book starts out your typical ‘troubled detective has to solve a case while solving her life’ kind of story. And I was here for it! But then, it takes a turn cause you see, there are things out in the forest. Things that can mimic a person. Things that want the children.
And pretty soon, we’re in proper supernatural territory.
I will say, pacing-wise, it kind of goes from zero to sixty in a moment. I was ready to kind of settle into the mystery-solving and then things were bad almost immediately. There is a section, towards the end of the book, where there’s some background on that body (which kind of gets glossed over with everything else that happens) and that story was fascinating and wish it had gotten more space! I wanted to hear that story, too! I’m sure there was more and it got cut in the edit but I’m out here yearning to hear more about that.
The story goes places I wasn’t expecting and the ultimate conclusion I would not have called going in. I love the idea of there being this folk culture in these small towns that still endures despite the passage of time and again, I wish there had been a bit more about that.
The more I type, the more I realize that maybe I wanted this story from another point of view. Rachel and Finn Kennan are broken, by life, by circumstances, and constantly sniping at each other. Watching the town break down around them fits the narrative and learning about their history, about how they got together (which, honestly? wild) and watching them hurt each other in ways only people who once loved each other can was wonderfully written and a journey to go on.
But there were bits I wanted to know more about (the person in the woods! the pastor coming to town and how that changed the way they reacted to the woods! that grandmother story we get towards the end!) and I wonder if we had a point of view character who was from the town, if it might have felt a little more solid on those points.
Ultimately, though, these are more points of preference rather than actual critiques. The log line on the publisher’s website is Mare of Easttown meets The Outsider and that is pretty on the nose! I was pulled into this right from the start and despite only meaning to read a few pages when I first pulled it up, I read the first third of this book on my couch before bed, finally making myself put it down to get some sleep. I also think this story would make a great film as some of the visuals (the eyes!) are incredibly creepy and I would love to watch them as well as read them.
This book won’t be for everyone but it certainly was for me and if you like detective stories with a supernatural, creepy twist, I think it might be for you, too. Definitely worth a look!
Nowhere is out now from Simon and Schuster wherever books are sold and at your local library!
And that was our first Subscriber Special! Let me know if is anything more you’d like to know in a Subscriber Special! And if you’d like to pick a book for me to dedicate a whole special issue to, subscribe to this newsletter for $35/year or $5/month and it’s all yours! See you all next week for a Horror Dispatch!