Here are links and excerpts to reviews and press for DAY OF THE DEAD (GETAWAY)…
From KIRKUS REVIEWS:
Michelle, who has lost both her husband and her financial foothold, meets a handsome stranger, Daniel, while she’s on vacation in Puerto Vallarta. But when that stranger turns out not to be the man he seems to be, Michelle finds herself stuck in a terrible state of déjà vu: Her late husband, Tom, left her deep in debt and wondering how she could have been married to a man who could sustain so many lies…
…Brackmann paints Michelle as a woman who has spent most of her life taking Pilates classes and decorating her upper middleclass home only to find that her husband was a complete fake. Unable to see much of a future for herself, she’s suddenly thrust into a world where brutal drug dealers rule and fear is her everyday companion. Caught between two men and unsure which one is the bad guy and which one is the good guy, or even if there is a good guy, the author offers a darkly plausible plot that might make readers think twice about making casual acquaintances on holidays.
Brackmann strikes exactly the right mood in this frantic look at an ordinary woman who can’t seem to claw her way out of the mess in which she’s managed to land.
From The Tulsa World:
A woman seeking an escape from a disastrous relationship. An exotic, tropical locale, where life moves to a decidedly different rhythm. A chance meeting with an attractive stranger.
It’s the starting point for untold numbers of romance novels. But novelist Lisa Brackmann takes this scenario and swiftly, brutally upends it…
…Brackmann’s novel has the mechanics of a thriller, with mysterious occurrences, suspicious characters, sudden and frightening blasts of violence, scenes that illuminate just how evil some men can be to others.
But it’s really a novel of character – the very human and very flawed character of Michelle Mason, a woman who for the first time in her life discovers what it is like to live without the safety net of social conventions beneath her.
Brackmann tells the story from Michelle’s point of view, a very limited third-person narration that gives the reader only the information that Michelle receives, letting us interpret the motivations and oblique conversations of the people she encounters.
That is what makes “Getaway” such a marvelously unnerving novel. By putting the reader so completely into Michelle’s mind, Brackmann creates a kind of existential thriller, one that swelters with menace and suspense right up to its ironic, ambiguous final seconds.
From Library Journal/ALA Summer Reading Picks:
“The ideal staycation thriller for armchair travelers from the author of the best-selling Rock Paper Tiger.”
