Bestselling author Andrew Pyper returns with a thrilling new novel about one woman’s search for a mad killer, and the unsettling relationship that binds them. What if you learned your father wasn’t who you thought he was? What if you learned you carried secrets deep within your blood? Dr. Lily Dominick has seen her fair share of bizarre cases as a forensic psychiatrist working with some of New … psychiatrist working with some of New York’s most dangerous psychotic criminals. But nothing can prepare Lily for her newest patient.
Client 46874-A is nameless, and insists that he is not human. He tells Lily that he was not born, but created over two hundred years ago, and that he wants Lily to know what he is. As she listens to this man describe the twisted crime he’s committed, she can’t shake the feeling that he’s come for her–especially once he reveals that he knew her mother.
Lily Dominick was only six years old when her mother was violently murdered while Lily sat unscathed in the next room of their cabin. Investigators assumed it was a bear attack, but she has never been sure about what really happened that day. Now, this madman–this monster–may have the answers she’s been searching for.
When he suddenly escapes from the hospital and kills Lily’s boss, she does the unthinkable. She sets out on a hunt for the killer, not to return him to the authorities, but to unlock the mysteries he holds to her past.
The Only Child is a riveting thriller that asks dangerous questions about family ties that are bred and born in the blood.
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“A dragon may be wondrous to behold, but that same wonder demands it be slain.”
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This was a great idea that suffered in the execution…
This is a gothic contemporary psychological thriller horror story full of hunters and victims and chases and history and mental health and personal growth and… Simply put, it tries to be too many things down too many paths, and thereby loses its way altogether. The concept – that there is one “man” who is responsible for the myths underpinning the gothic horror canon (Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula) – is a cool (if not necessarily utterly original) one. Pyper is a great storyteller. I’ve read his work several times before and always enjoyed it. He tells ambitious, creepy tales – and he tells them well. Unfortunately, this time he tried to expand beyond the ambitious into the stratospheric… As a whole, it just felt like a meandering jumble of things – which was a true shame, because it started off so strongly.
Full review: http://blog.jill-elizabeth.com/2017/08/03/book-review-the-only-child-by-andrew-pyper/
“She was awakened by the monster knocking at the door.”
With that opening line burrowing in your head, The Only Child kicks off. What a ride.
If you follow me on Twitter, you have undoubtedly come across any number of my tweets stating how Andrew Pyper is my favourite author. I have shared this tale before, but I stumbled across Mr. Pyper’s work in Walmart of all places. Whenever I go to Walmart, I always check the paperback section. They have a ‘2 books for $15’ section and very frequently I will discover a random book I would have never found before. This was how I found his 2013 novel, The Demonologist. (Fun fact, the other book I snagged for the deal was The Troop by Nick Cutter, and if that isn’t the single greatest book buying purchase of two Canadian Horror giants at one time, then I’m at a loss!)
Leading up to reading The Only Child, I randomly read Vlad the Impaler and The Resurrectionist. In hindsight, I truly couldn’t recommend two books better to read beforehand than those.
The Only Child reads like a horror book, wrapped in a dark psychological drama, wrapped in an ongoing Where in the World is Carmen Santiago?- action adventure. I read this in three sittings (only because I had to travel for work so saved it for the plane) and the number of phenomenal cliff-hangers in this book is amazing. You will be flipping the pages frantically, being pulled ever further into this amazing alternative history tale.
The story follows the main character Lily, haunted by the visions she sees of her mother’s death all those years ago in their tiny cabin in Alaska. Now working as a psychiatrist at a criminal centre in New York, she is assigned a curious admission. A man who tells her he is the true-life inspiration behind Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This patient tells Lily that he is over 200 hundred years old. Then the cat and mouse game begins.
One of the numerous gifts the author has is the ability to transport you to an exact location and allow you to feel the street under your feet, the buzz of surrounding traffic and people, and the smallest details that let your fingertips to actually feel the environment. His ability to use minimal words to convey maximal emotion will make you gasp time and time again.
Until reading this book, my favourite book of all-time was easily his 2006 release The Wildfire Season. Until reading this book, it was. The Only Child transfixed me from sentence one and never let go. I found myself pausing at points and using google street view, only to find the exact description I had read was so accurate I would be smiling.
The entire book is a sprint, a trip around the world that ends with a dramatic and action-packed finale. Sometimes you can go home again, and in this case Andrew Pyper shows why you must and what secrets still lay buried.
I couldn’t recommend this book more. 5 star ratings are sometimes inadequate and in this case it falls far short of what I want to rate it.
If you haven’t read any of Andrew Pyper’s work, please, please fix that ASAP, and this would be a fantastic place to start.
*This contains spoilers*
This was an okay read. It started off really good, but then it lost it’s strength pretty quick. I was a bit disturbed by the fact that she was turned on by her dad and wanted to have sex with him even after she found out that he was indeed her father. I really liked the Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde and Frankenstein connections. There were a few areas that I skimmed over. Basically the history lessons got a bit boring.