Illustration for the New York Times book review of Megan Abbott’s novel, “Beware The Woman” in which the protagonist stumbles out of a dramatic comedy and into a horror plot.
“Oh, to possess the heedless innocence of a character in a horror movie. We wring our hands like maiden aunts as they mosey blithely into danger: What could possibly go wrong in this cobwebbed basement/cabin in the woods/polygamist doomsday cult?
Even the inanimate objects in Megan Abbott’s “Beware the Woman,” though, can’t seem to stop screaming at the novel’s almost perversely compliant narrator, Jacy, that the life she believes to be a romantic dramedy has tipped heavily into psychological thriller. Wi-Fi signals blink and drop out; landlines go dead in the night. There is, in fact, a nefarious cabin in the woods.” - Leah Greenblatt