This was a wild ride. I love horror books but unfortunately this was not a great fit for me. I understand why sobriety played such a huge role in this book but it was a little hard to read. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess
by Andy Marino can only be described by one word, WEIRD!
We start the book by meeting Sydney as she walks into her house being burglarized. She is told she is lucky for not being beaten worse and her character immediately begins being questioned since she is now sober, but for a while wasn’t.
We go with Sydney as she faces trials and tribulations related to her brain playing games with her, as well as medical procedures she didn’t authorize.
Sydney’s husband and son, Matt and Danny, are with her, but Matt isn’t the great guy we are made to believe he is.
Sydney’s love for Danny us the only thing that is true from the first to last page.
As far as the writing style, the book flips between times in Sydney’s life which is a bit disorienting but it works for this book! My complaints would be that the book ended a bit abruptly for me and there was so many “omg” moments that I wish got wrapped up.
Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for providing an e-arc to me in exchange for a review.

I loved this book. Dark, perfect, addicting. I will be telling people about this book. Wow was it creepy.

This book is really meant to be read with the lights on. It started out a little creepy and quickly bloomed into horror with a capital H. Each visitation advances the story another step towards what is happening to Sydney Burgess and who set her up for the visits. Read at your own risk.

3.5+
"It happened so fast, say people who have lived through sudden bursts of violence—but for me, time's a slow drip and I can see everything at once. Black sneakers on our reclaimed tiles, old appliance manuals in the junk drawer, the RSVP to the wedding of my boyfriend's cousin, a small lace-trimmed envelope waiting to be mailed. The man's eyes are framed by the slit in his balaclava, a word I know from the tattered paperbacks I tore through in the rehab center's shabby library.

I take one step back, jam my hand into my shoulder bag, and rummage wildly for the pepper spray. But I've never used it before, and it's buried under travel Kleenex packs and lip balm and generic ibuprofen and noise-canceling headphones and laptop and charger and moleskin notebook and tampons."

After reading that opening, it was as if I knew the feeling of being trapped in a situation of intrusion.
I can't say I hated it because the writing is brilliant. With each description of the scene, I was soaking it all in. Every little detail of imagery works, except the involvement of the swimmer and I couldn't tell if this was the drugs or a demonic figure, which are kinda the same. This thriller is dark on the disturbing side with mind altering inserts.

Sydney, a working single mom, experiences a home invasion which leaves her damaged, but surviving. The intruder does not survive and although she doesn't know exactly what occurred, she thinks she left the scene by jumping out of a window and running for help. After being questioned by the police, she learns the scene was quite different and she repeatedly stabbed or carved the man up with 28 wounds.

Sydney's past as a drug addicts haunts her, which becomes tricky with it being past or current...I'm not sure. She suffers blackouts, memory loss and erratic behavior that could be contributed to her head trauma or a relapse. As she spirals out of control mentally and physically, she has a loving support team: her eleven year old son, Danny and her boyfriend, Matt. Unfortunately, everyone in her circle is in danger because the voices in her head are not nice and the "swimmer" is apparently her dark side. That ending had me like "What??!!" I need therapy 🥺
My thoughts go out to families that suffer in the realm of drug addiction. This is not for everyone...even me, but his writing is outstanding. Tis the season for a Horror fiction and will capture some fans.
Thank you Redhook Books and NetGalley for this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Triggers. A scent , a look, a memory lost to fog. Terrifying. What begins as a wrong place, wrong time event spirals out of control on every level. Eight years sober , gone in a drink, with a chaser. Gone a life full of challenges every day, but sober. Sydney so vulnerable at the hospital, lucky to be practically unharmed. Eight years sober, must confront demons on land and in her mind. The consequences are tragic.

Sydney Burgess is a women with an 11 year old son Danny. Sydney has been sober for 9 years. She is in a relationship with a man who is not her sons father, Matt. While Matt & Danny are out on a camping trip, Sydney goes back to their home to find that she walked in on an attempted home invasion. Having hardly escaped with her life, she is recovering in the hospital with The Deputy sheriff Butler asking her questions about the previous events. Sydney is Astounded to learn that she is the one who murder the intruder. The way she recalls events and the way events have been Portrayed will be Sydney Burgess undoing.

This book starts off super strong. But eventually the story just dwindles out, it was hard for me to finish. I think it has a lot of potential but for me personally I wasn’t a huge fan.

Marino does a great job at highlighting the struggles of someone struggling with addiction, how all consuming it can be the way it bleeds into every part of your life. There’s some spooktacular parts in this book, that gave me goosebumps, but mostly I was a little confused most of the time..

The ending was very unexpected

The books starts amazing. I was really hooked at the beginning. Sidney is an addict that has been clean for 9 years. One day, while her boyfriend and son are camping out, she arrives at her house during a break in. Impulsively, she kills the intruder. But she has no recollection of what happened that night. Until she starts to partially remember and speculate about how the events unfolded.
To be honest, I'm not sure if I understood what happened. Not only the book starts to feel boring at some point, but also, nothing seems to make sense. What are the visitations! Is Sidney possessed? Is she having a bad trip?
I really enjoy unreliable narrators, but what happened to me while reading this book is that I not only doubted the narration but also the author's purpose. When the narrator is unreliable you keep reading because you know that the author is following his own map and, eventually, you will get out of the muddy waters triumphantly and everything will make sense. Well, that didn't happen. I think he has a wonderful prose, my problem is with the execution.

Addiction has impacted almost everyone in some way or another. Some have known an addict through association, befriended one, or even been one. Some may not even know their life has bern impacted by addiction but it has.

For many, addiction is incredibly difficult to overcome. It is a need, a pleasure, and a compulsion all wrapped into one. For this reason, overcoming addiction is a major milestone. Sydney Burgess was an addict. She isn’t anymore, not for a long time. Through her recovery she gained a home, a wonderful son and a loving boyfriend.

But all of this come crashing down when Sydney walks in on a home invasion. What seems to only be an invasion of her home becomes an invasion of her life, and invasion of her mind, and an invasion of her body. This singular event alters everything Sydney has become and jeopardizes all she has gained. Can she learn to live with this thing that has taken over her or will it become her new addiction?

Excellent Dark Fantasy/Horror that leaves you feeling both intrigued and disgusted at the same time. You will want to know more but feel like you are looking in on something you shouldn’t. Unlike anything I’ve read before.

Ugh. I WANTED to like this book SO much. I was really looking forward to it. The premise and blurb were so intriguing. The first couple chapters hooked me…. And then I don’t even know what happened. Seriously. I have no idea what I just read. I like some pretty weird stuff, but this one was just beyond me.

The author is clearly very talented. The writing is good, the characters are well written and well developed, but the story is all over the place. I enjoy books with an unreliable narrator, but Sydney is just next-level. She was so unreliable, I felt like it handicapped the book -- like I just needed some kind of foundation to grab on to. The storyline is also non-linear (to say the least) jumping forward and backward from event to event without warning, sometimes revising events that have already occurred in the book. The book is divided into sections (labeled as the “visitations”) but I still don’t know what that means. Sydney was obviously spiralling, but as for what was haunting Sydney, what happened, what was even real and what was in her head, I have no idea. The open ending was incredibly dissatisfying, offering no closure or explanation for what I just read. Unfortunately, I just can’t recommend this one at all.

I’m grateful to NetGalley and Redhook for the opportunity to read and review The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess.

This was.... weird.

I feel like I've just woken from a fever-dream. The narration was very disorienting and made it difficult to understand what was happening. I understand that it may have been done on purpose but it was a bit much for me.

For hardcore fans of surreal horror, this one probably knocks it out of the park. It just wasn't my cup of terror.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, RedHook Books and Andy Marino for the free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

I really didn't know what to expect with this one and I don't even know if I understood or know what happened still to this day, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. This was a wild ride and there were so many WTF moments where something that happened was just so wild and unexpected. These were some of my favorite moments though and I was quickly immersed into the story. This won't be for everyone and I wanted more out of the ending, but for those who enjoy horror and a far out, but incredibly clever and unique plots - this will be enjoyable for you.

The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess by Andy Marino is a horror story about a woman who survives a home invasion, but doesn't quite remember what happened. Sydney keeps hearing a voice deep within herself, and she starts remembering some really strange things. I think the horror genre may not be for me, because this book was just way too weird for me; and I really did not enjoy it. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

After surviving a home invasion, Sydney wakes up in a hospital and the police inform her that she brutally killed the burglar. However, she has not memory doing that. She’s not sure what to believe anymore. When she returns home, she begins questioning her own memories and threatens to lapse back into her old drug habits as she searches for the truth.

Buckle up because The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess by Andy Marino is one weird ride (even by my standards).

This is a trippy, disorienting read that blends together different timelines and reality with nightmarish visions. I suppose this is a deliberate choice to reflect Sydney’s own disjointed mental state, but it also makes for a sometimes confusing read.

One of my biggest issues with the novel though was the prose itself. I’m fine with lyrical writing, but some of the purple prose and word choices in this book are … bizarre and I don’t quite feel like the first person narrator's voice matches the main character.

Overall, this is a creative yet convoluted twist on a possession story with some fantastically hallucinogenic passages.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an advanced readers copy of this novel to read and review. The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess by Andy Marino is a wild ride. Sydney Burgess has had to reconstruct all aspects of her life including overcoming old addictions, building a life for herself and her son, and establishing a stable-ish new relationship with Matt. However, one night she opens her front door and is greeted by a masked intruder who knocks her unconscious briefly. This is just the beginning of her nightmare. She wakes up in the hospital and tells a story of having to escape by breaking out of a window and fleeing to her neighbors' yard. Are Sydney's memories of the attack to be trusted? According to the cops, Sydney's intruder is dead in her guest room, and his death seems personally motivated. What follows is Sydney's attempt to uncover what really happened that night, and whether or not the people she trusts the most in her life have something to do with it.

This novel was fascinating to read. It has a tendency to fling itself forward into the future often after a crazy cliff hanger ending in the previous chapter. At first it has you saying wait but I wanted to know how we got from point A to point B. Thankfully, the author often backtracks to fill in the gaps. It honestly felt like you were inside Sydney's head and trying to cope with the gaps in her memory right along with her. Ultimately as things start to tumble out we realize nothing is as it seems. Sydney comes to realize she is not alone in her head, and that she may not be 100% in control of her actions. The problem is.....she kind of likes it.

This was a very fun ride. I enjoyed the read, and the concept of biological artificial intelligence is kind of terrifying. Andy Marino is a new voice in horror, and I look forward to reading their future work.

This isn't my final review. I haven't been able to sort my thoughts well enough yet. But I do know this is one of the best books I've read this year, for sure, and for a few years it's definitely in the top ten. I know it grabbed my attention from the absolute beginning, and those books somehow always end up being the best ones to me. I don't know how people are so confused - it seemed like the themes (and there were a few to pick from, so I'm hoping there will be some great think pieces written soon to see what others picked up on) were clear. I haven't done lit analysis in years but I could see the argument for at least two or three things incredibly clearly. I know Andy Marino gave credit to his influences (giallo horror greats, to be certain) in his thanks at the end of the book, but there were others I picked up on as well, and maybe they are so ingrained in our horror consciousness, it was thought obvious or maybe simply overlooked. There were touches of Barker, Koontz, Lynch, Cronenberg, and Carpenter in there for me as well.

As to the writing, I have so many phrases highlighted—either for the beauty in the words, the way things I've felt have finally been put into words, or even the sheer absurdity of what's happening at the moment. I'm sure if I were to print out these little snippets, I'd have a couple pages.

Also, this is how you write descriptively while informing your reader and not only adding to your word count and fluffing the pages (ahem, King). Words aren't wasted. Even repeated phrases have a payoff, a purpose.

Like a "requiem played by shrieking ghosts" was a bit that stood out to me, but there were many others. "Fear welling up inside a man unused to being afraid is a wonder to behold "

This was an extreme and horrifying book, but in a good way. My only wish now is that the secondary storyline that created the conflict in the book would be explored in a sequel. It's a fascinating catalyst that needs its own story told.

Sometimes when a story bounces back and forth between the past and present, it is done really well. That is not the case in this book. The story started off strong, but then it just got so confusing.

The premise of this story was intriguing with the idea of an unreliable narrator weaving her way through a traumatic event. Sydney is a woman, unknowingly walking into her home and interrupting at what appears to be a robbery. Attacked and scared, she mostly remembers snippets of what happened thereafter.

As the memories start to return, she's being told, that's not what the evidence is matching with which further confuses and infuriates her as she can't recall anything else.

This is story goes from a thriller, to a possible paranormal/psychological thriller/suspense but just kept twisting and turning until it honestly left me confused and baffled by what was happening. It definitely keeps you reading although some of the storyline starts to blur here and there, especially when the time jumps start happening.

I did like the story but at the end...I was still completely lost. This is also not for the faint of heart as there are descriptions of violence and torture, so please be wary.

My Rating: 3.5 Stars (rounded up to 4) because the writing of the ups and downs of addiction were so damn intricate and well written.

Thank you to the publisher, author and Netgalley for allowing me to read this ARC with honesty.

(Will also be cross posted to GR, NetGalley, blog and possible IG bookstagram.)

You know how in movies, when a coma patient starts to wake up in between blinks of their surroundings? They have no concept of how long it has been between their blinking, and the faces they see are different every time? Well, this book was like that. Every chapter is a blink between present and past. Its not just years that get jumped around, its specific horrible events that chapter jump right before the big climax, into the aftermath. This was frustrating as hell, but built the suspense level to an all time high. I had to read, to consume each page, as fast as I could to find out what the hell she did. Omg and she did horrible things.
The story is about addiction, an addiction beyond drugs. Its addiction to life, family and the truth. I was craving, needing everything Sydney yearned for. The writer, Andy Marino, is a gifted wordsmith. The way he wrote Sydney's addiction, was felt deep within me. I'm not an addict, but I could commiserate with her. This is not something I normally feel when reading about that subject matter. I avoid books with drug abuse, because I can not relate. But this book was different. The book itself was addicting.
There is so much blood in this book. The body count is low, but the blood is knee deep. It soaks the pages. Definitely a horror story, but with quite a twist. Once you get to the twist, it becomes otherworldly. There is no way the reader can predict where this story is going. I dare you to prove me wrong. Its so completely screwed up, and wonderfully dark.
I'm hooked. Marino made me an addict.