Juno Guadalupe

The Lights of Greyfare by Juno Guadalupe is a gothic horror novel set in a Northeastern coastal town where mysterious "lights" have appeared. Needful of change, anything to pull her out of a deep depression resulting from a nasty and brutal divorce, journalist Katherine "Kat" Calder accepts an offer to investigate and report on the phenomena of "lights" appearing and children disappearing in Greyfare, Maine. The people of Greyfare are friendly, but clearly hiding something, a secret not to be disclosed - ever. Kat meets Dean, a widower displaying many of the traits shared with Kat over a familiar sense of loss, and as their bond deepens, so too do clues to a deep and dark mystery that permeates everyone's lives in Greyfare.

Juno Guadalupe's first novel is a solid winner, a masterful "collision" of literary prose and supernatural fiction where the two forms come together to create a story that keeps readers guessing, while maintaining a stranglehold to keep them turning the pages. I've seldom read a novel that captures the literary characteristics of layered prose, in the form of multiple meanings and perspectives wrapped into a single narrative, while maintaining conspiratorial suspense and characterization. Gudalupe's ability to set the scenes, build the characters, and that all-important verisimilitude (sense of reality in all facets of the story) make for a captivating novel that is just the beginning of what could quickly become a fruitful career. The Lights of Greyfare is among the very best horror novels I've ever read, rivalling some of the world's top authors in this genre.