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.