The House Guests

The Brown sisters (Zetas Till We Die) deliver a choppy psychological thriller about a woman who questions her own sanity after she thinks she’s crossed paths with a killer. Struggling with grief over her mother’s death, Iris agrees to accompany her husband, Eli, to a lakeside cabin in the Catskills for a weeklong getaway with his friends. When Eli has to attend to a family emergency, Iris arrives alone, and notices a strange figure burying what appear to be human remains on the property. Eli’s friends, who show up later, don’t believe her story, and several of them taunt her. As the week stretches on, Iris’s pills and accessories go missing, and she hears strange sounds in the night. Convinced Eli’s friends are gaslighting her—and receiving little support from the late-arriving Eli—Iris tries to convince the rest of the group they’re in danger before it’s too late. Eli’s friends aren’t much fun to spend time with, Iris’s paranoia is too one-note to sustain sufficient narrative momentum, and when the reveals come, they strain credibility to the breaking point. This is a misfire. Agent: Jessica Faust, BookEnds Literary. (Dec.)