"Lacuna's Point" Book Review

Tim Meyer’s latest novel, Lacuna’s Point, is a book of family and terror. When Ellie Brower’s daughter vanished three years prior in the heart of Virginia, it shattered her. When Ellie receives a mysterious message which tells her that her daughter may still be alive, she is led to the mysterious town of Lacuna’s Point.

Unfortunately, Lacuna’s Point is a disturbing place. The locals are hostile and nobody has ever seen the mayor. There is something sinister about the clock tower that seems to dominate the town, and the place slowly warps as Ellie unravels its mysteries. And as the town mutates, so too does its people.

This is a character-driven horror novel, and Meyer spares no expense with Ellie. She is a beautifully fleshed-out, complex figure driven by the possibility her daughter is alive. She is also flawed, and makes errors, but does the best with what she has. Meyer brings the people of Lacuna’s Point to life and gives even the villains a riveting amount of depth.

The novel feels like an unsettling puzzle. Every section of the town and every person in it matters to the overall plot and resolution. From the start, Lacuna’s Point is filled with an unsettling and overwhelming sense of wrongness, a subtle build up with a payoff that hits like a sledgehammer.

Meyer doesn’t answer every question, but Lacuna’s Point has a fantastic climax. The most pressing mysteries are given excellent resolutions that mirror the darkest sides of the American dream. Meyer writes a gory, fun, unsettling, otherworldly book and makes certain the reader has every bit as much fun the entire time.