#BookReview The Queen by Nick Cutter @SimonSchusterCA #TheQueen #NickCutter #SimonSchusterCA Title: The Queen

Author: Nick Cutter

Published by: Gallery Books on Oct. 29, 2024

Genres: Horror, Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 384

Format: ARC, Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 8/10

The national bestselling author of #HorrorBookTok sensation The Troop returns with a heart-pounding novel of terror about a young woman searching for her missing friend and uncovering a shocking truth.

On a sunny morning in June, Margaret Carpenter wakes up to find a new iPhone on her doorstep. She switches it on to find a text from her best friend, Charity Atwater. The problem is, Charity’s been missing for over a month. Most people in town—even the police—think she’s dead.

Margaret and Charity have been lifelong friends. They share everything, know the most intimate details about one another…but Charity carries a secret that even she is unaware of. A secret engraved into her DNA helix. For Charity is also known Subject Six, the crown jewel of Project Athena—a clandestine and unorthodox gene manipulation experiment, the brainchild of tech titan Rudyard Crate. And when Charity’s gene sequencing actualizes during a traumatic event at a high school party, it sets in motion a chain of events that will end in tragedy, bloodshed, and death.

And now Charity wants Margaret to know her story—the real story. In a narrative that takes place over one feverish day, Margaret follows a series of increasingly dreadful breadcrumbs as she forges deeper into the mystery of her best friend—a person she never truly knew at all…


Review:

Dark, creative, and creepy!

The Queen is an intricate, ominous tale that transports you into the life of two main characters, Margaret Carpenter, a teenage girl shaken by the sudden disappearance of her best friend Charity, and Rudyard Crate, a tech billionaire who, after suffering a traumatic childhood experience which resulted in the horrific death of his sister, embarks on a gene manipulation experiment involving insects known as “Project Athena.”

The writing is nuanced and sharp. The characters are scarred, determined, and impulsive. And the plot is an eerie tale full of twists, turns, friendship, mayhem, obsession, power, grandiose delusions, questionable motivations, trauma, tragedy, death and violence.

Overall, The Queen is an intense, visceral, disturbing page-turner by Cutter that left me with an even bigger case of entomophobia and is a terrifying reminder that advances in science can be good or bad depending on how someone chooses to use them.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

        

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Nick Cutter

Nick Cutter is the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller The Troop (which is currently being developed for film with producer James Wan), The Deep, Little Heaven, and The Handyman Method, cowritten with Andrew F. Sullivan. Nick Cutter is the pseudonym for Craig Davidson, whose much-lauded literary fiction includes Rust and Bone, The Saturday Night Ghost Club, and, most recently, the short story collection Cascade. His story “Medium Tough” was selected by author Jennifer Egan for The Best American Short Stories 2014. He lives in Toronto, Canada.