Book Review: The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess by Andy Marino

 

SUMMARY:

Sydney's spent years burying her past and building a better life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. A respectable marketing job, a house with reclaimed and sustainable furniture, and a boyfriend who loves her son and accepts her, flaws and all. But when she opens her front door, and a masked intruder knocks her briefly unconscious, everything begins to unravel. 

She wakes in the hospital and tells a harrowing story of escape. Of dashing out a broken window. Of running into her neighbors' yard and calling the police. What the cops tell her is that she can no longer trust her memories. Because they say that not only is the intruder lying dead in her guest room, but he's been murdered in a way that seems intimately personal. 

When she returns home, Sydney can't shake the deep darkness that hides in every corner. There's an unnatural whisper in her ear, urging her back to old addictions. And as her memories slowly return, she begins to fear that her new life was never built on solid ground and that the secrets buried beneath will change everything.

TEE'S THOUGHTS:

The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess is not an easy book to read, in fact, at times it will make you uncomfortable. I put the book down several times, only to find myself picking it back up again. I am not a person afraid to DNF a book, I got over that fear a long time ago, so when I kept picking Seven Visitations back up, it was because I felt the sudden urge that I needed to continue to see what was going on.

It is gory, the author spared no details about the violence and its aftermath, the descriptive writing is what I think makes the book uncomfortable, but it also is what makes you want to keep reading It is about addiction. Raw and gritty. The author does a great job of giving you a feeling of being controlled by it.

The book can be confusing, there were times when I had to read a paragraph or two over before realizing that the story had jumped backward or forwards. But even having this trouble, I thought the writing in this book was exceptional. Perhaps the quick changing of time was there to make you feel the confusion of Sydney's mindset? But it was most likely me.

 For me to tell you that this book was this genre or that genre is also confusing. It is a thriller, and a good one, the suspense will keep you turning those pages and forgetting you have dishes or other things to do. It is also horror and has supernatural aspects, something I was not expecting at all. However, I did go into this book not knowing much about it at all so I was open-minded and there are definitely places that you need to be that way.

Did I like the main character Sydney? Well, I liked her love for her son and her concern for his well-being. As a former addict, I felt that she was a decent person, and gave her big props for changing her life around. But she wasn’t perfect. She had problems, but don’t we all. Through her, you get a look into how difficult it is to fight personal demons. She is hard to like honestly, but again, I get the feeling we are not supposed to really connect with her. This is a downward spiral in her life, you are not going to be pleasant and likable

The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess won’t be for everyone, there are a lot of triggering aspects to this story. It is gory, it is sometimes completely bizarre, but there was something about the need to keep reading, the way the author so expertly draws you into Sydney’s life and her story that will keep you reading, even when you want to put it down, and once you get to that twisted ending…you will be glad you kept reading.