Dec 27, 20115
Really liked it
Read from December 17 to 25, 2015
SHIELDED PAST by Patti Morelli was selected from Book Club Reading List.
Kate doesn't know much about her childhood, and she's not asking--not yet. After growing up in the System, and bouncing from family to family, Kate has finally made it. She's got a great job, she's married the perfect man (Gregg), and they've just bought the perfect little house in the country. The only problem is that the house sits on the grounds of an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Kate becomes mildly obsessed with the hospital, noticing the eerie presence of a light in one of the windows. To make matters worse, Gregg has to travel a lot for his work, leaving Kate alone with her imaginings and her growing dread of the hospital. With the help of her friend Annie, Kate begins to go down the rabbit hole of her past, first exploring the hospital, discovering family she did not know she had, and secrets that haunt her dreams. She discovers that the psychiatric hospital was the scene of indescribable horrors--and is a place that is indelibly intertwined with her past and her present.
I was excited to read this book when I found out it had a horror/psychological thriller element to it, and I was not disappointed. I have long been fascinated and disgusted with the treatment of the mentally ill through the ages. Mental illnesses for which we now have multifarious diagnoses were in many cases chalked up to simple "madness," and the treatments were not nuanced in the least. Heavy sedation, lobotomy, and "skull drills" were among the available treatments, and all in all, psychiatric hospitals, well into the 20th Century, were more like jails than treatment facilities. This certainly seemed to be the case for Kate’s mother at the Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital in Shielded Past.
From a narrative standpoint, Morelli made extremely good use of her chosen setting, and exhibited a really good understanding of how to build narrative tension. She begins by presenting us with a picture of a perfect life, where everything is seemingly as it should be: Cinderella has her prince, they're moving into their castle, and there is already a room for a future baby. From there, everything starts to slip gradually into chaos. There are light moments along the way to break up the tension, (This is not Stephen King, after all. But even Jack Torrance didn't slide into madness overnight.) but overall, the story continues its relentless march toward its terrible climax. The horror Kate faces lies less in the present and more in the revelations of the past. But there is certainly a growing threat to her own person--and Morelli, I think, really effectively foreshadows this threat without out giving it away outright. It's a hard balance to strike: making you suspect someone and then making you second-guess yourself right up until the last second. In my opinion, one of the best villains in all of literature is Iago from Shakespeare's Othello. Perhaps it is because he is the most despicable sort of villain in that he presents the face of a friend while hiding the heart of a wolf. Shielded Past draws a bit on this motif.
I felt that Morelli had a really solid cast of characters. Kate is arguably the main character, but I liked learning about Kate through her friend Annie. Annie was sort of the life of the book. She is so much more than comic relief, but drives the story forward. It is she, not Kate, who is the catalyst for many of Kate's discoveries. I was also fascinated by another character (who I will not reveal by name, in the interest of avoiding spoilers) who was a monster and did monstrous things, but who was also capable of deep and real love. I love it when an author takes a risk and asks us to look at the other side of the monster. It is easy to demonize those who do despicable things--and maybe they deserve to be demonized, at least partly. But it is even harder, and maybe more worthwhile, to try to find the humanity in such people.
The one beef I had with Shielded Past probably stems from my editing background. There was a lot of inconsistency with use of punctuation, paragraph breaks, etc. throughout the book. I can, of course, excuse missing periods or close-quotes here and there, but there were many instances where I had to stop and figure out who was talking because it was not clear from the formatting. Also, a personal stylistic preference, but I really dislike comma splices. I think there are instances where two independent clauses can be joined by a comma if it is following the natural flow of language. But in many instances, spliced sentences just read funny to me, almost like run-on sentences, and feel a little careless.
Conclusion
Patti Morelli has crafted a really great story with Shielded Past. If you've read my past reviews, you know that I put the highest premium on story. And while I prefer that the strength of the writing match the strength of the plot, I am more concerned that the plot and the characters work together cohesively. In Shielded Past, they do just that. I was hooked early on, and I found myself reading for hours at a time at each sitting. If you want a suspenseful read that will have you guessing right up until the end, you will not be disappointed.
Just remembering that those were my impressions and opinion while reading the book :)
This book was AWESOME. SO AMAZING. SO PERFECT. I apologize in advance, as it is so much more complex than my humble description, but it was a creepy and intelligent read! It surpassed all my expectations and for sure was one of the best horror/mystery books that I’ve read in my life! Overall rating was 4 stars :) Now let’s get serious, haha!
The writting technique is the point that lost a star on my rating. Specially on the beginning of the book, I felt that I was reading a screenplay that had been transformed into a movie. And there were other minor typing/grammatical errors along the way, so this is the only reason I didn’t gave this book a full and big 5 stars rating. It was a third person narrated book with switching point of views, in the exact way that I like, so we always knew all that was going on. Moreover, Morelli was brilliant at this because we couldn’t be sure of nothing until the really final chapters, as the mystery was too big. Morelli has a simple writing style that makes you fly by her story and feel the intensity of it like a punch, haha! I was constantly breathless each time that I picked up this book to read and couldn’t sleep after the end, haha!
The plot was brilliant and very well executed. For every aspect of her life that Kate solved, there were other four or five new that she had to question. PERFECTION. The mystery remains until the very end, as the real villain threatens to kill Kate and we don’t know if she is going to survive. And I’m not going to tell you if she did <3 There are no loose ends on this book, everything gets solved – oh, almost. There is a bit of a cliff hanger on the epilogue, but I can live with that, it was nice, haha! I hope this becomes a series!
Bonus point: this is a horror/mystery book that has an old mental institution on its plot. I love those! It’s one of my favorite scenarios for horror books, haha! That’s why I lost my mind in the Asylum series, haha!
I also freaking loved the way Morelli builds her characters: they are so real in the little things, you know? Good or bad, their actions are true and you can understand their minds, their problems, desires and developments. I loved Annie and really connected with her (I swear is not just because my middle name is Anne, haha!). She was always so funny and optimistic despite everything that happened in her life and her eventual boyfriend is one of my new bookish boyfriends (oh the list that I never made, haha!).
The scenarios description was always very detailed, but not that kind that tires off the reader. I could see all the places just like in a movie in my head, where nothing passes in blank for Morelli. This is that type of book that, after you finish, you want to re-read just to see if you could have figured everything out sooner, haha! If you like a good thriller / mystery / horror book, just read this one. Just do it.
5 Frightening Stars
This is another book that I had some trouble getting into. I just couldn’t get a grasp on who was actually telling this story. It felt like there were too many points of view, but I stopped and thought about it. I decided to think of the story as being told from a person not really connected to the story. Maybe a reporter. Once I took that approach, I was able to “listen” to the story being retold to me. What a story it is.
Talk about a series of unfortunate events. That is the life of Kate. Living in foster care she made the best of her life. Her last foster mother instilled the importance of getting an education and working hard. She became successful at her career, has a loyal best friend and foster parents that truly cared for her. She marries a wonderful man and her life is getting better every day.
Things are not always what they seem. When Kate tries to find out about her biological mother, she learns of how warped her past was. She learns how her mother’s love forced her to put her in foster care to keep her safe.
With every turn of the page, this story becomes more twisted keeping you wondering and guessing until the very end. Great thriller that will have you up all night just to finish this book.
ARC Provided by Elite Book Tours. Honest review done by Mollien, for Alpha Book Club without influence from publisher or author.
reviewed by Michael Radon
"Gregg come look at this, there's a light over there, didn't Tom say the Psychiatric Hospital had been shut down?"
After a rocky start, Kate's life was becoming everything she'd ever hoped for. Orphaned at a young age and living in and out of foster care, Kate is now a successful regional manager for department stores in the greater New York City area. Now, Kate is newly married to Gregg Lawson, an architectural designer and handsome man that Kate was smitten with since she first laid eyes on him. The two are able to buy a dilapidated house for very cheap in Marlboro, New Jersey because of its proximity to an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Gregg fixes up the house to be a dream house, and Kate is overjoyed with their new home until she sees a light on in the hospital from her window. What starts as a curious fascination with the nature of that light becomes a thread that unravels virtually every aspect of Kate's life, from the identity of her mother to a mysterious activity that her husband is involved in.
Packed with suspense and mystery, this was a thoroughly engaging book from start to finish. There were multiple surprises throughout each of the chapters, culminating with a big reveal and a suspenseful finish. Elements of romance, suspense, drama, horror, and even the supernatural can be found in this story, and they blend together very well as Kate and her friend Annie dig compulsively into information that proves to be both rewarding and dangerous to the both of them. The characters are well-rounded and fascinating, from the bubbly Annie to the nefarious and twisted Dr. Reisner, and the climax proves to be both satisfying and exciting for readers. Considering the inclusion of some rather dark subject material, readers with frail sensibilities may need to sleep with the lights on after uncovering the mysteries of this story.
9
