Monthly Archives: June 2025

Nestlings – Nat Cassidy

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When Reid and Ana win an apartment lottery they are thrilled that they can leave their crappy Brooklyn apartment and their crazy landlord, Frank. The Deptford is a swanky building overlooking Central Park. It’s almost too good to be true, but Ana and Reid could use a break.

They’ve recently had their first baby, Charlie, but the birth wasn’t without its complications and Ana has been left in a wheelchair. She isn’t sure living on the 18th floor of the Deptford is the right decision, but she has to admit that the apartment is fabulous even though her first thought upon viewing the space is “We don’t belong here.”

Nat Cassidy’s novel Nestlings is very much a riff on Rosemary’s Baby with less devil worshippers and more…well, I’ll leave that for you to figure out. Reid settles into the space relatively easily, but Ana is trapped in the apartment with Charlie, who never seems to stop crying.

Things are weird in the apartment almost immediately: goopy stuff around the window in her daughter’s bedroom, the sounds of crying from the apartment next door, the strange concierge and even stranger elevator operator, staircases that go nowhere. No one will actually come into the building to deliver food; Reid has to run across the street to collect it when the delivery guy shows up. But, yeah, sure, small price to pay for living in a place that under other circumstances they could never afford.

As the story moves along and as Ana (and the reader) begin to understand just what this building and the assortment of eccentric people who live in it are all about, the stakes get a little higher. This couple is dealing with a whole lot–post partum depression, grief, marital discord, a disability. It makes them sort of the perfect victims but, of course, a mother’s love should not be underestimated.

Lots of creepy (and a few campy) moments in Nestlings. It wasn’t outright scary, though. The first two thirds were pretty slow moving, then things ramped up towards the end. If horror’s your cup of tea, I think you will probably enjoy this one.

Await Your Reply – Dan Chaon

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Here’s a weird reading situation: I started and finished Dan Chaon’s novel Await Your Reply without really understanding what I was reading. The novel follows three different stories, all of them compelling enough to keep me reading but when I turned the last page my reaction was “huh?”

In one story, recent high school graduate, Lucy, runs off with her handsome history teacher, George Orson. It makes sense for her to go; her parents are dead and she isn’t close to her older sister, Patricia. “And so: why not? They would make a clean break.” George has promised her a remarkable life, but first a stop in Nebraska, where George becomes secretive and evasive.

In another story, Miles is on the hunt for his twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for a decade. Hayden’s most recent letter to Miles is filled with dire warnings about “the police, and any government official, FBI, CIA, even local government.” Miles knows his brother has had some mental health problems, and he could just ignore the letter when it comes, but he can’t do that, especially when Hayden tells him that he “may never hear from [him] again.”

Finally, there’s Ryan and his father, Jay. The novel opens with the two of them traveling to the hospital.

On the seat beside him, in between him and his father, Ryan’s severed hand is resting on a bed of ice in an eight-quart Styrofoam cooler.

Ryan has only recently been reunited with his father and that reunion caused Ryan to give up the life and parents he once had. Jay is kind of a dope-smoking deadbeat who makes his living by stealing people’s identities and drags Ryan into this life, too.

So, what do these stories have to do with each other? It feels like absolutely nothing, yet my brain kept trying to fit the pieces together. The book’s unique structure makes it almost impossible to discern whether or not these narratives are running concurrently or one after the other. The book has a lot to say about identity and whether or not we should be content to live just one version of ourselves. I dunno. I found this book flummoxing, but I kept reading and I would still say I enjoyed the read even if most of it flew over my head.

Come With Me – Ronald Malfi

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Part ghost story, part serial killer story and part story about grief, new-to-me author Ronald Malfi’s novel Come With Me reminded me of the work of authors like Peter Straub and Thomas H. Cook, both fine authors imho.

Aaron Decker, a translator, and his wife, Allison, a reporter for a community newspaper, are happily married. They live a quiet life, but their happiness is upended when Allison is tragically killed. It is only after she is gone that Aaron discovers a receipt from a motel stay that Allison hadn’t told him about. Was she having an affair?

I’m of the opinion that when it comes to secrets, there is no end to what we don’t know about a person. Even the person who sleeps next to us and shares our lives.

Aaron can’t help himself; he has to go looking and what he discovers takes him on a journey through the back roads of his wife’s childhood and towards a serial killer.

Come With Me is written as though Aaron is talking to Allison and it appears Allison is communicating with Aaron from beyond the grave. Lights flick on. Songs offer clues. Fragments of conversations that previously made no sense click into place. Aaron discovers surprising secrets about his wife and soon he finds that he has no choice but to finish what she had started before her death,

I really enjoyed this book. It isn’t horror, and it isn’t a straight up thriller, either. It’s not a page turner, although I did very much look forward to diving into it every chance I could. There’s definitely some creepy moments and definitely some suspense, but I compared Malfi to Straub and Cook because both of those writers penned literary mysteries/ghost stories. Thoughtful and slow moving. I hope the comparison is understood as the compliment I intend it to be.

I will definitely be checking out more work by this author.