Lakewood

This book is part horror, part thriller but not the usual light and twisty story about somebody murdering their husband or a wife that’s been locked up. You know I love those books, but this goes much further and deeper than those books.  This is an important book and a horror thriller of the psychological nature. It’s the sort of book that sticks with you and makes you break out in chills upon thinking back on it later. Lena Johnson is a college student with a heavy weight on her shoulders. Her mother is sick, her grandmother just passed away, and they are in a lot of debt. The best job she can find involves dressing up as a corn chip for $9.25 an hour. A new job offer surfaces and it seems like a dream. Move to Lakewood, Michigan with free rent, high pay, and health insurance for both her and her mother. It will be more money than she’s ever known. The catch? She’ll be participating in a secret research study. She drops out of college and takes the job, and that’s where the horrors start. From memory drugs to drops that can change your eye color, the experiments range from innocent(ish) to potentially devastating. As the book goes on it becomes increasingly difficult to tell what’s real and what is fake. It’s set in modern day but with a nod to the horrible tests and experiments that have been conducted on Black bodies in the name of science. It’s part Black Mirror, part Handmaid’s Tale and I can’t stop thinking about it.