Breed
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Critically celebrated novelist Scott Spencer delivers a Rosemary's Baby-like novel of gothic horror, set against the backdrop of modern-day Upper East Side Manhattan.
Alex and Leslie Twisden lead charmed lives-fabulous jobs, a luxurious town house on Manhattan's Upper East Side, a passionate marriage. What they don't have is a child, and as they try one infertility treatment after the next, yearning turns into obsession. As a last-ditch attempt to make their dream of parenthood come true, Alex and Leslie travel deep into Slovenia, where they submit to a painful and terrifying procedure that finally gives them what they so fervently desire . . . but with awful consequences.
Ten years later, cosseted and adored but living in a house of secrets, the twins Adam and Alice find themselves locked into their rooms every night, with sounds coming from their parents' bedroom getting progressively louder, more violent, and more disturbing.
Driven to a desperate search for answers, Adam and Alice set out on a quest to learn the true nature of the man and woman who raised them. Their discovery will upend everything they thought they knew about their parents and will reveal a threat so horrible that it must be escaped, at any cost.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Advanced reproductive technologies prove just a new form of mad science in this timely, engrossing medical thriller from the pseudonymous Novak (Scott Spencer, Endless Love). Wealthy Manhattan couple Alex and Leslie Twisden are incapable of having children, it seems until they avail themselves of the services of Dr. Kis, a dodgy fertility specialist in remote Slovenia. Dosed with a concoction of extracts from the tissues of several aggressive animal species (including a cannibal fish that feeds on its young), Alex and Leslie produce twins, Adam and Alice, though at the cost of horrific side effects to themselves. Ten years later, Adam and Alice run away from home, terrified of their parents, who subsequently seek out Dr. Kis in order to get some answers and save their family. Novak writes with an energy that propels the reader through the novel's unlikely science and subplots. He also winks enough to suggest that this all could be a black comedy on modern parenting.
Customer Reviews
Breed
I wouldn't really call it horror. More like a thriller. I really enjoyed it to a point. I wish the characters were more developed and the ending was simply awful. It's like the author just ran out of steam.
Pass on this author!
The book is a quick read. The story is intriguing (in the sense that you want to know how it ends), but the overall prose of the author are just downright terrible. Run-on sentence after run-on sentence. The metaphors and similes he seems to conjure up make no sense at all. Even worse, he is constantly stuck on the same vocabulary. I would even go so far as to wonder how much he actually used the word "immense" in describing characters or setting. Furthermore, he uses the same tones and verbose ways of speaking for every character. Throughout the novel every character ends a conversation with"…, old friend," a poorly appropriated phrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who at least had the good sense to ensure only ONE character spoke that way.
Breed
Oh yuck! Too bad I can't get a refund on this loser! Such a disappointment! Just plain disgusting and a waste of time! Pass on this one. . . .