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On a soft summer night in Vermont, twelve-year-old Lisa went into the woods behind her house and never came out again. Before she disappeared, she told her little brother, Sam, about a door that led to a magical place where she would meet the King of the Fairies and become his queen. Fifteen years later, Phoebe is in love with Sam, a practical, sensible man who doesnâ#128;#153;t fear the dark and doesnâ#128;#153;t have bad dreamsâ#128;#148;who, in fact, helps Phoebe ignore her own. But suddenly the couple is faced with a series of eerie, unexplained occurrences that challenge Samâ#128;#153;s hardheaded, realistic view of the world. As they question their reality, a terrible promise Sam made years ago is revealedâ#128;#148;a promise that could destroy them all.
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Jennifer McMahon was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1968. She received a BA from Goddard College in 1991 and studied poetry for a year in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. Before becoming full-time writer in 2000, she worked as a house painter, farm worker, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness. Her first novel, Promise Not to Tell, was published in 2007. Her other works include Island of Lost Girls, Dismantled, and My Tiki Girl. (Bowker Author Biography)
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A young girl disappears in the woods one summer night. The only clue to her whereabouts rests with her brother and her cousin, who never reveal what they know because to them it seems crazy-another one of her wild imaginings. The King of the Fairies was coming to take her away, she told them. And so, it would seem, he did. But 15 years later, Sam Nazzaro has grown up and moved on with his life when he receives word from his long-lost sister. She is back, and the Fairy King wants to make good on old promises, she says, to take what belongs to him. At first Sam is disbelieving, but soon he and his girlfriend, Phoebe, find themselves wrapped up in a sinister plot, no longer knowing what is real and what is imagined. VERDICT McMahon's (Dismantled) latest literary thriller seems designed to keep readers guessing, but with an overly complex plot and excess of characters, the thrill of suspense is lost amid confusion and frustrating loose ends. Only for the author's fans.-Leigh Wright, Bridgewater, NJ (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Family secrets and fairy lore create a shifting reality in McMahon's unsettling novel about the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl who longed to become Queen of the Fairies. Fifteen years after Lisa goes missing, her younger brother, Sam, gets a strange phone call that leads him and his girlfriend, Phoebe, to discover a book, supposedly written by the King of the Fairies, that Lisa used as her bible to cross over, and which prompts Sam and Phoebe to meet up with Sam's cousin, Evie, to see if they can figure out what happened to Lisa. Nothing is as it seems from that moment on, and Phoebe's longtime fear of a dark man in the shadows seeps back after she discovers, in true woo-woo fashion, that she is pregnant. McMahon (Promise Not to Tell) alternates between the past and present with loads of portent and foreshadowing, creating a rural Vermont chiller with a Rosemary's Baby vibe, but even after a surprising villainess emerges and more than a few disquieting passages about Lisa are burned through, many readers will remain in the dark. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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Imaginative 12-year-old Lisa disappeared 15 years ago, right after she told her friends and family that she was crossing over to the fairy world. Her little brother, Sam, has grown up to be a levelheaded man who is still convinced that Lisa was abducted by a predator. When his girlfriend, Phoebe, receives a phone call from a frightened woman claiming to be Lisa, the two are seriously spooked and set out to discover the true identity of the mystery caller and what really occurred 15 years ago during the miserable summer Lisa went missing. She had claimed that running off with the king of the fairies, Teilo, was going to dramatically improve her life, since her father had recently overdosed and could barely talk, and her cousin Evie, with whom she had been especially close, was keeping secrets. McMahon moves the action between the past and the present and works overtime to shore up her elaborate plot, but she is so skillful that readers will be pulled right along by her affecting portrait of family dysfunction overlaid with the eeriness of the supernatural.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist
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