Book Review: A Twisted Ladder

             Today's review is on A Twisted Ladder by Rhodi Hawk

Ah, New Orleans. The food, the music, and the beautiful plantations. The ghosts, the demons, and of course, the voodoo. It's all there, and it's all here in A Twisted Ladder, along with love, murder, and adultery. Captivating from the first chapter, I stayed up until 3am reading!

What better way to start this fantastic debut than with a brother plotting the murder of his very own sister? That's exactly what Marc has in mind when he calls Madeleine. He has to protect her from what is happening to him before she too is affected. After all, it affects everyone in the family, and there's no escape.

Madeleine LeBlanc is a Psychologist who has pretty much devoted her life to the study of cognitive schizophrenia, the disease that afflicts her father and quite possibly her brother Marc, which resulted in his suicide.

Marc's home is filled with dirt, grime, and papers. Papers that lead Madeleine on a journey through her family's past, and the terrible secrets that lay there. And at the center of the secrets is her astranged great-grandmother Chloe.

Now over 100 years-old, Chloe possesses some sort of magical ability. An ability that she has passed down through her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. But while Chloe wants to strengthen this ability, Madeline wants only to understand it and more importantly control it, realizing that schizophrenia wasn't what plagued her family. It's always been the river-demons.

Madeline never really thought about happily-ever-after when she thought about her own life. With Daddy Blank gone most of the time, she and Marc had pretty much raised themselves. But when she falls in love with neurologist Ethan Manderleigh that all changes. But will he stay with her through all of the craziness that her life has become?

A childhood friend has his eyes set on Madeline, and though she doesn't know it yet, he has become a serial killer. She finds out that her brother had a child and kept it a secret from everyone, especially Chloe.

Flashbacks to the past keep the story interesting, though does leave some questions unanswered. Hopefully they'll be answered in the second book, The Tangled Bridge. I can't wait to see what happens next.

4 of 5 stars
Available at Amazon



Book Description: via Amazon

Psychologist Madeleine LeBlanc has spent her whole career trying to determine the cause of her father's schizophrenia. She always felt that she could unravel its origins and cure the man who left her and her brother, Marc, to practically raise themselves on the Louisiana Bayou. But when Marc takes his own life on a fishing boat in the middle of Bayou Black, Madeleine embarks on a journey into her family history---to a time when the antebellum era was crumbling, and the line between servant and master was starting to fade. And the more she pries the more she reveals her family’s dark past, rife with conjured demons and river magic gone awry. Madeleine’s only hope to save herself is to face the ghosts of the past, the dangers of the present, and the twisted ladder that links them all together.