Rating: 4 stars (Spotlight Review)
With a backpack full of files and newspaper clippings on sightings of the Virgin Mary, Sue Barlow speeds out of her small college town in upstate New York. She must get to Louisiana before they find her; before they destroy any evidence of the horrific revelations hidden in those documents. Biblical scholar Dr. Virginia Marshall may be the only person who would believe it. She may be the only person who won't think Sue Barlow is insane.
Three months earlier, Sue arrived on the campus of Willbourne College. For the first time in 18 years, she is not under the strict guidance of her doting grandparents. Kept in a harsh bubble in their luxurious Manhattan apartment, she has everything a rich girl could want; programmed by her guardians to believe how special she is...how bright her future will be...how different. She is just like her mother, Mariclare, a former student at Willbourne College. But Sue has never known her mother, or her father, since they died in a car crash when she was just a baby. No one speaks of her parents; especially her father.
When she first sets foot on the campus, she had an odd feeling; the feeling of being watched. Then the nightmares begin; a girl being murdered outside the gates of the posh college, a pool of blood. There a rumors of cults and witchcraft on campus; of a girl raped in a dorm room twenty years ago. Then two more girls go missing and dangerous -- even deadly -- things begin to happen to those around her, simply because she wished them into being. Sue soon realizes that she is, indeed, very different. Her true potential is about to be realized and Dr. Marshall, ten-year-old girl and a priest may be the only ones standing between Sue and the gates of Hell.
The book jacket gives the impression this is simply a serial killer running loose on the campus of a girl's college. It took 150 pages of dry groundwork to prove otherwise but it was worth the wait. Turns out, this is no serial killer; it is something far, far worse. Something of biblical proportion.
Part murder, part End Times prophecy, John Manning has written a taut, intelligent thriller based around the Antichrist/apocalypse scenario but with a unique twist. Instead of male-dominated Biblical dogma, the plot is based on the controversial "sacred feminine." What if it is the Blessed Mother herself wielding the sword in battle? Building a story around the concept of female dominance was an interesting alternative and a welcome change.
Although slow in the beginning, the momentum shifts gears quickly when the title lives up to its name; there is plenty of death and mayhem to be had. The characters themselves are full of life (even in death) and no stone is left unturned. Everyone is in on the game, even if they are minor bit players stopping in at the local diner for a cup of joe. And Sue...well, she's just plain evil and plays it to the hilt. Or is she? Which side did she choose?
That mystery may be best left to the reader's imagination. Or a sequel...
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Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
Pub. Date: April 2009
ISBN-13: 9780786017980