Synopsis
On a sunny morning in June, Margaret Carpenter wakes up to find a new iPhone on her doorstep. She switches it on to find a text from her best friend, Charity Atwater. The problem is, Charity’s been missing for over a month. Most people in town—even the police—think she’s dead.
Margaret and Charity have been lifelong friends. They share everything, know the most intimate details about one another…but Charity carries a secret that even she is unaware of. A secret engraved into her DNA helix. For Charity is also known Subject Six, the crown jewel of Project Athena—a clandestine and unorthodox gene manipulation experiment, the brainchild of tech titan Rudyard Crate. And when Charity’s gene sequencing actualizes during a traumatic event at a high school party, it sets in motion a chain of events that will end in tragedy, bloodshed, and death.
And now Charity wants Margaret to know her story—the real story. In a narrative that takes place over one feverish day, Margaret follows a series of increasingly dreadful breadcrumbs as she forges deeper into the mystery of her best friend—a person she never truly knew at all…
Review
A huge, huge thank you to Gallery Books for getting an ARC in my hands!
Nick Cutter has crafted a spectacular tale of grotesque metamorphosis through the lens of a coming-of-age tale like no other. The Queen, his latest novel, is an insectile, violent bout of adolescent reckoning that lingers long past the final turn of the page.
Equal parts Carrie and The Fly, Cutter holds an unrelenting magnifying glass to the pains of growth, the wrongness, the “ickiness” of change and heartbreak that our teenage selves know all too well. The arrival of a cell phone on Margaret Carpenter’s doorstep marks the beginning of an unfathomable twenty-four hours in which Charity Atwater, Margaret’s missing best friend, initiates a scavenger hunt from hell. In hopes of finding Charity, Margaret follows the instructions that show up on this mysterious phone, leading her down some unsavory, haunting, and downright gnarly paths. Of course, this all comes to a head in an event that gives Carrie White’s prom night a run for its money. The Queen is a sickly, bittersweet tale of friendship, of love lost along the unstoppable train of change, and the stomach-churring path of destruction left in its wake.
Give Nick Cutter his flowers now, for not only writing an incredibly gripping novel that checks so many boxes of the horror fiction genre but for also managing to wrangle that complicated beast that is complex female friendships. Well, that’s not quite right. Female friendships are complex for a variety of reasons, but this topic isn’t something that’s fought off or won over like a violent duel. Instead, Cutter’s approach to such a thing with The Queen feels like a communion, a willingness to understand and unpack where things fly off the rails. It’s this approach that makes Margaret and Charity’s relationship seem so alive and real. With such a strong, beating lifeforce at the center of this story, emotional investment is instituted immediately and very much felt for the next 350 pages.
Sustaining this momentum is something in which The Queen excels particularly well, in addition to many other things, most notably Cutter’s commentary on puberty. In what feels like a very deliberate choice, every imaginable facet of insect horror is on full, raging display in this novel from the vile to the unthinkable. It’s hard to not draw the connections here. On the one hand, you have revolting horror that accompanies the grossness of bodily changes, hormonal fluctuations, and body dysmorphia that signifies the wavering bridge between adolescence and adulthood. And on the other, you have the bizarre, repulsive nature of creepy crawlies that elicit those same feelings of abhorrance. Cutter makes you feel every wave of (sometimes relatable) disgust, confusion, and nausea surrounding teenage angst and transmutation all for a very real purpose.
Let’s also not forget Cutter’s masterful evaluation of classism and elitism within the pages of this book. Margaret and Charity forged their friendship in the front yards of trailer homes, knowing the lifestyle of living one paycheck to the next. Yet in another instance of irrevocable change, Margaret’s family has found wealth, further widening that divide between the girls into an abyss. This is compounded by the fact that Charity’s disappearance is dismissed while other missing boys of the same age are treated as princes in their absence. I’m sure this sounds like Cutter has many irons in the proverbial fire, which he does, but those flames never feel out of control. This is the kind of novel that provides bountiful social commentary without ever once feeling overwhelming. If anything, this only makes the story more compelling, more propulsive, and more thought-provoking.
Where The Queen succeeds above all else is its ability to make you feel. Sure, some of these feelings are that of discomfort or revulsion, but they serve a deep-seated purpose and are not executed for shock value or transgression. Margaret and Charity were girls, and now women, tasked with confronting the gargantuan hurdle of change before their very eyes. That alone can be a horror story in and of itself, something that seems so apparently clear to Cutter through his writing. Add a layer of extra appendages, exoskeletons, and antennae, and you’ve got yourself one bonafide, yet still heartfelt, horror novel. The Queen will live long in my mind, its buzz still rattling around my grey matter for the foreseeable future.
The Queen by Nick Cutter is on shelves TODAY (10/29) from Gallery Books! You can also read George’s amazing review here.
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