Customer Reviews

The Price

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Will is a charismatic Massachusetts politician bound for the Governor's Mansion. His beautiful wife Joanna endured horrible abuse as a child but seems to have put it all behind her, reveling in her role as passionate wife and devoted mother. The family leads the perfect, charmed life - until their beloved daughter Sydney is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Not surprisingly, Will and Joanna vow to do absolutely anything to save their child. When a mysterious hospital counselor offers them a way to do exactly that, they're both faced with a soul-shattering choice.

Alexandra Sokoloff interweaves scenes of everyday life with eerie, disquieting images, creating a mounting sense of dread. This is a classic spooky story - loaded not with gore and bloodshed, but instead with surreal nightmarish encounters and a plot that plays on every parent's worst fear. Sokoloff's ability to suffuse the ordinary with an aura of understated horror reminds me of Shirley Jackson.

I thoroughly enjoyed THE PRICE - okay, maybe enjoyed is the wrong word. I was thoroughly disturbed by this creepy tale of terror and look forward to reading more by Ms. Sokoloff in the future.

I'm always on the lookout for novels that are truly scary without having to resort to unnecessary gore. I happened upon Alexandra Sokoloff's first novel The Harrowing, and it was exactly the kind of read that I was looking for, and I instantly became a fan of hers. I picked up The Price the day it was released, and once again, Ms. Sokoloff has shown readers how truly adept she is at creating atmospheric thrillers. The pace was fast and well-plotted, and the character development of Will Sullivan was very well done - readers are made privy to his thoughts and fears, making him a protagonist that is easy to care about. The story itself was disturbing and never predictable, and when the novel ended, it did so in a manner fully in-keeping with the overall menacing mood of the piece.

The Harrowing was an impressive debut, and The Price illustrates quite well that Ms. Sokoloff is an exceedingly talented author who is a welcome addition to the worlds of horror, suspense, and psychological thrillers.

I loved Sokoloff's first novel for its crisp, foreboding style and smart, realistic characters. Her writing is so much more focused and fresh in comparison to most other horror writers. She's outdone herself with her new book, which is even better and richer. If you've always thought of hospitals as creepy places with their own dark soul, you won't want to miss this. It's a fast, fun, frightening read and highly recommended.

This was a great book. Intense, heart-wrenching, fast-paced and thought provoking, it had all the elements to make a truly remarkable thriller. Ms. Sokoloff managed to write a truly frightening tale without the use of gore. I recommend The Price to anyone who enjoys reading. No, I didn't forget to add a genre (or any other word for that matter) on the end of that sentence. There's something for everyone within these pages.

This is a great book, really well written. Creepy, scary, reminds me of Dean Koontz or maybe even Stephen King. I really enjoyed Sokoloff's first book The Harrowing but I liked this one even better. Highly recommended.

When extremely ill children suffer through pain, fear and isolation anything that springs them back to life is considered a miracle. Charismatic District Attorney Will Sullivan is making his way though the corrupted world of politics when his race to be Massachusetts governor is stopped short by his five year old daughter's sudden illness. Sydney develops a tumor that is malignant, growing each day and engulfing her tiny body, reducing her to a sheer copy of the bubbly, happy girl she used to be. Will's wife Joanna spends every waking minute in the hospital room with her daughter, drifting away mentally and physically from her husband while he roams the hallways unable to think. On his walks he encounters a tall man who is always near the patients who are the sickest, after a while Will notices something strange about the man and the patients that he visits. They walk away in full health while their loved ones seem to loose something precious to them. Sheer terror takes over his mind when one day Sydney is suddenly getting healthy, her tumor vanishing while the doctors seem very nervous and unsure of the causes. What makes matters worse, it seems that Joanna made some soft of a deal with the mysterious man, and now Will fears of the price that she will have to pay. After Sydney is released, days go by in a blur but when life seems to be getting back to normal, he notices his wife acting strangely, her disappearances at night, her torn clothes, the vacant look in her eyes, he must find a way to explain the "miracle" that has tangled it's claws around Joanna, fearing the worse, the unexplainable, the darkness that holds mysteries that no one should know in life.

I really liked the book; it was dark and chilly, marvelously written. There was no gore; the psychological terror that prayed on Will and the eerie hospital corridors that had many secrets was dense and added richness to the novel. Author's descriptions of her characters were vivid, Joanna dressed in jewel toned silks, the rich plums and orange contrasting with her raven hair and snowy skin made me visualize her and made her distress that much more menacing. The discord between the married couple grew, making me a nervous wreck, hoping that it wasn't too late to save the family. The only issue I had with the story was the ending, at first when I got to the last page I was stunned thinking "that's it?" with this feeling of the ground being pulled under me, my mind still so open from the story had nowhere to grasp itself to for more explanations. A day after reading it I feel the ending was more serene than I would have wished, but still open to many terrible possibilities. It was not a loud and explosive finish, it was more suave and refined but I wanted a little bit more, just a tad of closure for one of the characters. Perhaps this way my mind can wonder about it for much longer than book that have a very specific end, maybe the author is secretly doing this to toy with the reader, overall I think she's marvelously talented and I hope she writes tons more books.

- Kasia S.

Alexandra Sokoloff writes with tension, grace, and power, weaving a supernatural embroidery to her fabric of family love and potential loss. She's one of the best suspense writers in the game, and she's getting better with every book.

Scott Nicholson
Author of Scattered Ashes

Alexandra Sokoloff's book is a creepy page-turner in which the horror and tension mount continually until the very end. The lead character is Will Sulivan, political superstar. His daughter has a large malignant tumor and the likelihood of her dying is huge. Will is offered an opportunity to save his daughter's life, but the price to do so turns out to be more than he wants to pay.

By interspersing real-life situations with the medical drama Sokoloff has managed to thoroughly ground her book in reality, which makes the horror more relevant.

While not as lengthy as Pet Sematary, this book belongs to the same class of thrillers.

I know from the reviews some people really loved this book, but it left me... well, bored. Will Sullivan, the main character, is in a hospital where a strange, elegant man in a dark suit wanders around listening for people who say, "I would do anything" and then, in his wake, the ill become healthy, the healthy become ill... okay, I am not going to put in a spoiler, but do I *need* to? How can anyone not figure out who this man really is and what's going on in this hospital in the first 20 pages (or, come to that, from the title)? Will Sullivan can't, and I kept waiting... and waiting... I figured, once he finally worked it out, something might in fact happen. Unfortunately, Will figuring it out *is* the big finale. This whole book felt really old... these deal-with-the-devil books have been around for decades... and I thought there was nothing in the treatment to make it seem even a little fresh. It also wasn't scary, partly because Will is never in any kind of genuine peril (there is some creepy atmospheric stuff, yes, as he wanders around the halls confused by everything), and partly because it's written a lot like a (not very good) screenplay. The characters are flat and one-dimensional, and there are so, so many ellipses used: "Night... night, and the flashing of sirens... sirens that danced across the hospital wall" etc. Hugely disappointing after the Harrowing, which was a fun treatment of a possession tale-- and had some of the originality desperately missing from this hackneyed remake.

This book really kept me on the edge of my chair the whole time I was reading it, one of the very few I've read in recent years that could do this. Fabulous, absolutely fabulous, full of tension and questions and suspicion, and the most unique and surprising endings I've ever read.