After Harry Potter artificially inflated sales for several years running, bookstores needed a way to demonstrate continued YOY growth against such unrealistic numbers. Some of them embraced certain books and tried to drum up enough enthusiasm internally that booksellers would generate WOM buzz and the books would catch on fire. So when a colleague came into my office with a stack of books and plopped one on my desk, announcing, “Required reading!” I grimaced and put it aside. I’ll take a personal recommendation from a bookseller but no one tells me what to read.

In this case the strategy worked: the enthusiasm caught on, that book became a runaway bestseller and was eventually made into a movie. I never read that book or saw the movie.

I brought that book home but couldn’t make myself read it. My husband picked it up and, not knowing much about the subject, read it and kept telling me about the ideas in it, which were not new to me. Based on the other 20 or so books I’d read on those topics, that book sounded derivative and I wanted to read it even less. He gave the book to his sisters and they passed it around and read it, and it became a hot topic of conversation at our next holiday gathering. I didn’t partake of the conversation and, when asked, said I hadn’t read it but could contribute a little context from other books – non-fiction books – on those topics. And then shut up quickly because I saw that, while those ideas were fun to read about in a novel, adding historical facts or context took the fun out of it for them.

It’s like the difference between reading 50 Shades of Grey – another book I eluded – and trying out bondage. All those suburban moms liked reading about it but, somehow, I doubt many of them put it into practice.

So I don’t rely on “expert” recommendations for books. My husband, on the other hand, consults book reviews when holiday shopping for his family. This year, he was determined to stick to books that the Times or the New Yorker had recommended. While I was skimming their lists for his sisters’ gifts, this one caught my eye.

Who is this mysterious woman, alone in The West, in the 1800’s, and what does she have in that large,  locked trunk?

How could I resist? I picked up an eCopy for myself and devoured it.

I would describe this book as Western Gothic. Sure, you could call it horror, as people are killed and injured. But it doesn’t really dwell on the bloody details much. I go back to the GOT TV series – this has less gore than that. And it doesn’t have, like so many “horror” novels have, a malevolent supernatural force that poisons the setting and the characters, a la Stephen King or Dean Koontz. There’s a little supernatural here, but not much.

The book has a really fun setting: the Wild West, where food is precarious, women are assertive, and jerks pay the price. (And why the heck is spell check determined to replace “jerk” with “Jerusalem”? If this is AI coming for my job, bring it on!)

This book kept me up all night to find out what was going to happen next.

What is this mysterious woman’s backstory? Where did she get the thing in the trunk? What happened to her parents, her boyfriend? How will she avoid starving (a real risk in the West, especially the first year, when you haven’t yet tilled the land or grown a harvest)? Will she make friends with that strange woman on the next homestead over? What did that neighbor do that made the townsfolk fire her as school ma’arm? And why don’t other children play with the neighbor’s child? What happened to that strange woman with the four blind children who just disappeared one night from a supposedly haunted house?

So many little mysteries that keep you reading. The characters and setting are fascinating – who doesn’t love a western, especially if it’s also a mystery? – with historical details that add to the fascination. The writing is easy to read and engrossing – although it slows down after revealing what was in the trunk, it picks back up again for a great finish that ties everything together in a satisfying way.

I picked up a copy for one of my SILs for Christmas. It will be interesting to see what she thought of it: she likes historical fiction with strong female characters but doesn’t think of herself as a horror reader.

Time to stretch.