The Spin

Four years ago I read my first (and favorite) Faith Gardner book Amen, Maxine (a perfect title that the publisher ruined and renamed The Prediction  *yawn*. I digress …) I’ve had hits and misses with her books since, but her newest book The Spin has reminded me just how clever and good her writing can be!

When we first meet them, Leo and Rose Crawford are a happily married L.A. couple living in the Vietnam War era 60’s with a teenage daughter Melinda and a baby on the way. Leo is an ad-creative hoping to move up the company ladder at Century. In fact, Rose even performed a radio ad for VitaSmile, one of their client’s products, and participated in a consumer research study for another client. That study did NOT go well!

The reader only knows that Rose got kicked out of it for bizarre and aggressive behavior toward the doctor. Leo and Rose have been trying to put it behind them since. Now Rose is starting to talk to herself and show signs of being detached from reality. Things escalate until she’s briefly hospitalized at Woodward Neuropsychiatric Center.

Three years later the story picks up. Rose is seeing a psychoanalyst to talk about her thoughts and nightmares. When she starts behaving bizarrely again, talking about ‘The Dream Box’ and telling Leo and his co-workers that demons are working at Century, he fears she’s having another psychotic break and takes her back to Woodward - a hospital Century has ties with.

Is Rose just imagining things or is there something more to the ties between Century and Woodward? What is ‘The Dream Box’ she keeps mentioning? Will Leo finally hear what she’s saying and figure out answers before it’s too late?

There’s a lot more going on in this story than just Leo and Rose. In fact, Rose isn’t the primary focus of the book. This has a lot of historical fiction elements touching on involuntary hospitalizations and human experimentation in the name of ‘consumer research’, which is downright terrifying, but it’s also a look at some of what was going on in the 60’s. 

The teenage daughter, Melinda, is a 17-year-old trying to navigate a war-time period without stable parenting and with the threat of losing her boyfriend to the draft. The story takes us to the free love, drug-infused hippie era culture of life in the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, which was fascinating in its own right. You also see the puritanical reaction to that of Leo’s mom Harriet, who was somehow both completely unbearable and hilariously self-righteous.

The author’s note is important to read, as Gardner shares the personal inspiration for this book. We see the unique POVs of Leo, Melinda, Harriet and Rose, which gave the story more emotional depth. Gardner put me in all of their heads, which wasn’t always a comfortable place to be, but it was so compelling! I can highly recommend this to those who enjoy a suspenseful psychological thriller with some historical fiction and family drama. This is now my second favorite of hers!

★★★★ ½ 

Thanks to Mirror House Press, NetGalley and author Faith Gardner for this DRC to honestly review. It’s out now.