| Title | : | Antioch |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1943720495 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781943720491 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 212 |
| Publication | : | First published October 27, 2020 |
After picking up a late-night transmission on her short-wave radio, a local bookseller named Bess becomes convinced a seventh victim has already been abducted. Bess is used to spending her nights alone reading about Amelia Earhart conspiracy theories, and now a new mystery has fallen in her lap: one she might actually be able to solve.
Assuming she doesn’t also wind up abducted.
Antioch, a cross between Session 9 and Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, is an eerie mind-bending debut horror novel guaranteed to leave you drowning in paranoia.
Antioch Reviews
-
Not for me. At all.
-
I adored the beginning of this book. It had me hooked with the Amelia Earhart conspiracies and the whole shortwave radio hobby, but somewhere along way it lost me and I have no idea what I read. Nothing got resolved and I feel like I went on a chase to end up nowhere. I’m just staring off into space scratching my head!
-
Antioch is the 76th book I've read this year...and I think it's my favorite? The jury is still out, but it's definitely a contender.
This is a true blue psychological horror novel with intellectual and emotional range that does so much more than just delivering a killer plot without calling too much attention to it. Not only Antioch is a novel about disappearing women, short wave radios and Amelia Earhart conspiracy theories, but it's also a novel about how uneasy it is to exist with a bunch of horny men lurking around you. Jessica Leonard really wrote a strong feminist novel without transforming her male characters into sex demons. There's a lot of empathy and accuracy to her writing.
Antioch is creepy, funny, moving, obsessive and plenty of other qualifiers that are meant to be taken positively. It's also pretty darn readable. Finished that thing in like, four or five sittings. More on Dead End Follies tomorrow! -
I was all over the place with my feelings on Antioch. In the beginning, I loved it, and it was so mysterious. My feelings changed as the book went on.
I'm not really sure how to talk about this next part. The main character is Black, and some things happen that would be a specific experience for only Black women, but I think this book is written by a non-Black author. I was not really comfortable with some aspects of the story based on that.
This book left loose threads, and it was confusing. I was not a fan of the ending - it was abrupt, and didn't make the story much clearer. I was frustrated since I had been really into it in the beginning. I felt like this book maybe relied a little too heavily on red herrings, and I was hoping for more clarity.
CW - false confession, sexual harassment -
*actual rating is 4.5*
Antioch has a murderer running rampant, he’s dubbed Vlad the Impaler. Six women have been brutally murdered and there’s no real lead to who it could be.
By day Bess works at a bookstore, and by night she’s on a shortwave radio and looking into Amelia Earhart conspiracy theories.
One night Bess picks up a very odd transmission through the radio. She’s convinced that what she picked up is proof that the murderer has a 7th victim and if something isn’t done, then they’ll end up just like the rest.
Fun fact about me: I used to be obsessed with Amelia Earhart. I had to do a project on her in middle school and I was fascinated. I think that’s what grabbed me in the beginning about this book. A main character who had an obsession that I always randomly had? Sign me up.
The premise of the book is something that I find interesting, a regular person playing detective and trying to solve a case or stop the murderer before they kill again.
It’s suspenseful, it’s a race against the clock. Will they be able to save the person? Will the murderer figure it out and try to kill them?
I thought I knew how the book was going to play out based on that premise alone. Boy was I wrong.
I was confused the whole time.
The. Whole. Time.
First, Bess is a highly unreliable character. She drinks quite a bit, she loses days-thinks it’s Monday, when it is fact Wednesday. Her reactions are sometimes alarming, she seems unfazed by something that should be very unnerving.
Those are just some of the things, but there is a lot that makes Bess super unreliable in my opinion.
I even think someone could say that her fascination with Amelia Earhart conspiracies could be detrimental to her reliability.
In fact, every character in this book is highly suspicious. At one point I could see each of them being responsible for the murders. I didn’t know who had good intentions and who didn’t.
The paranoia from this book, omg.
Which leads me into my next point, the questions. I have so many freaking questions.
The book doesn’t answer anything, nothing, zero, nada, zilch. Unless, I am just not connecting the dots, which could totally happen.
The ending was sooooooo abrupt, I was devastated. It felt like it had just hit the climax and then poof, over.
I read the last sentence about 20 times before I accepted that it was truly over. I also read it that many times hoping something would reveal itself to me and give me some type of answer.
Like I said I have so many questions. I don’t know anything.
Now, I do think there are several conclusions one could come to from the ending. But that just doesn’t fly with me, I need something concrete to grab onto and while I think some people could create an ending, I don’t know what I think.
This books captivated the crap out of me and I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it, minus the ending.
The loose strings are very annoying, but I don’t know there was just something about it that made me love it. -
"Bess thought nothing bad could ever happen in Antioch. It was too small, too isolated from all the chaos of the rest of the world. But someone was trying to prove that a small town could hold just as much evil as any other."
This is a twisty paranoia fueled ride. Great debut from Jessica Leonard, excited to see what she comes up with next! -
I’ve been in a fiction reading slump for several months, and this book catapulted me right back into my reading happy place.
I don’t even want to say too much because I think this one is best enjoyed without any preconceived ideas. The story is strange and interesting and combines unrelated concepts in a really unique & compelling way. I love the bits about the Amelia Earhart conspiracy theories and how that is the thread that links everything else in the story. It didn’t end the way I expected and I think that’s even better...when it was over, I felt more unsettled than I’d felt while reading (and there are some genuinely creepy moments throughout.) I think because everything I had thought the story was leading up to...well let’s just say, it wasn’t? And I think the not-knowing was most unsettling of all. It took me a while to shake it before I was finally able to go to bed.
Excellent debut! I’m excited to see what Leonard brings us next! -
Quite the psychological book here. It started out pretty straight forward but then turned into a ‘what in the world is going on here’ type of story. I personally love an unreliable narrator and Bess fits the bill perfectly. She gets mixed up in trying to solve the case of a missing woman because she is murdered like several women before her. We are led down a spiral of conspiracy theories, religious tie-ins, possibly corrupt law enforcement, etc. This had some spooky scenes also! There were times I couldn’t understand why the main character would react a certain way which did take me out of the story a bit. But—overall, I enjoyed this and read it very quickly.
-
Review to follow...
-
3.5
-
"A cross between Session 9 and Disappearance at Devil’s Rock..." Hell yes! I am game to read anything with similarities to Disappearance at Devil's Rock.
-
Fun little supernatural murder mystery.
-
Bess, a bookseller, conspiracy theorist, and avid shortwave radio fan, becomes embroiled in the hunt for a serial killer in her hometown of Antioch. After tuning into a strange broadcast on her radio, which she comes to believe is being sent by one of the killer's most recent abductions, she become obsessed with tracking down the murderer that has been haunting Antioch for the past two years and stopping him before he can kill once again.
Jessica Leonard's debut is a briskly-paced whodunit that presents a number of tantalizing potential suspects over the course of Bess's amateur investigation. She does a fantastic job of laying the groundwork for each possible killer, leading to a clever, intelligent, and well-earned reveal before Antioch's shockingly abrupt finish.
For me, the sudden end to this story is what hurt the most, and I wanted more in the way of resolution to the plot and for the characters. Antioch runs full-speed ahead, and then has its legs brusquely cut out from under it. I really wanted to spend more time exploring with Bess, given the all the unique avenues of investigation and unreliable characters with dubious motivations that Leonard delves into, and I would have a beefier climax.
Leonard does a great job exploring the philosophical, historical, and religious motivation of the various suspects, exploring issues of toxic masculinity, gaslighting, and police corruption. Its her upending of Christian beliefs, in the last third or so of Antioch, as seen through the eyes of one potential killer that I found most intriguing. Neat, too, are the ways in which Bess's fixation with short wave radio and the various theories surrounding Amelia Earhart figure into things. It's an unusual combination for a serial killer story of this type, but Leonard makes it work.
Then again, Antioch as a whole makes for an unusual serial killer story all its own. I really dug the premise and execution, and Leonard plays with some really neat tropes here, but I wish it had just a little bit more meat on its bones in its final moments. While Leonard gives us plenty to happily chew on, I didn't get to savor the last course quite as much as I wanted to. -
A small town, a vicious string of murders, and a bookish girl who enjoys shortwave radio and conspiracy theories—Leonard's unique debut horror novel had me hooked from the first page.
This book is a bit difficult to review as a lot of my thoughts hinge on the abrupt and unexpected ending. I promise—the book is worth it just for this final reveal (which, shock value–wise, is on par with the ending of Sleepaway Camp. Do I have your attention yet?).
Leonard captures that small-town-with-a-crazy-murderer vibe, and I do love an intrepid woman investigating crime, especially when she's just a normal citizen. The story takes on some heavy topics, like a corrupt police force, and I think the story could have taken those aspects of critique even further. I was definitely hooked on the story though, and it kept me reading late into the night. I also really enjoyed the real-life elements that were tied into the book such as the ongoing discussion of Amelia Earhart's disappearance and the story of Saint Margaret and the dragon.
There is an unreliable narrator aspect to this book, and it took me a long time to catch on to that. As I was reading, the plot felt uneven to me, with the main character waffling back and forth between wanting to know what was going on and wanting nothing to do with it, even when really strange things were happening to her. Though obscuring certain facts was definitely the author's intention, I think if I had been aware of the unreliability factor, I would have followed the plot a bit better and not been as confused by the abrupt flip-flopping and strange happenings.
Though I actually really like the ending, it leaves a lot of threads loose and I was left wondering why certain plot points weren't explained and why others were included at all. In the end, though I enjoyed the reading experience, I would have liked the story to be more tightly plotted.
My thanks to PMM for my copy of this one to read and review. -
I had to sit with this One awhile. I’m a big fan of the unreliable narrator. And from the start I loved this character. She is kooky and strange. Says and does inexplicable things. The reader is left wondering what’s real and what’s in the imagination of the character, Bess.
I had to think about this book for awhile to try and figure out my theories. If you are the type of reader who doesn’t like ambivalent endings you might be left wondering.
Overall, this book had some great character development with Bess. She was quirky and flawed. But in an endearing way. There’s still a lot of mystery and the reader has to fill in some of the blanks. I would have liked some of the side characters to be fleshed out a little more.
At first I felt somewhat disappointed with the ending, however it definitely kept me thinking for a few days. And in the end, if I’m still thinking about it, it was a good read! -
Come for the conspiracy theories (I love a good conspiracy theory story) and stay for the mysterious happenings and unreliable narrator.
Antioch has the most gorgeous cover, but the story was confusing to follow and the end left me perplexed at what happened. I liked it, but a certain thing kinda rubbed me the wrong way...the main character is Black and the author isn't and some of the character experiences in the story read strange to me in an almost racist, trying too hard way?! Idk if that even makes sense, but something about it was too virtue signally? 🤷🏻♀️ I might be overthinking it as a white lady🤷🏻♀️ either way, it turned me off and I set the book aside for a couple weeks before finishing it. Race didn't seem important to the story at all, so just don't get why it was mentioned at all -
Antioch by Jess Leonard is a thriller. It has all the elements of a thriller, it has a serial killer, a strong woman who lives alone, the possibility of corruption with red herrings and perhaps a deep dark rabbit hole of conspiracies that swirl around the story like a maelstrom of constant confusion and obfuscation.
The first thing I noticed was that this book read like watching a movie, it had cinematic beats, tropes I have seen in crime movies and ghost movies, but mingled together in a way that reminded me heavily of 2013’s “Gothika”.
The first chapter was good, really good, it introduced ideas and concepts and ideas that seemed minute in the moment but were interesting, allowing the seeds to rest and later fully bloom into something dark and sinister. I almost set the book aside during the second chapter, a slice of life for the protagonist, but I pushed through because of the power of the first chapter. And I was rewarded because the book didn’t slow down from there. I don’t know that I would call it a non-stop thrill ride, but it was constantly engaging and constantly interesting.
There are places where the narrative is harder to follow than others, but by the time you finish will understand how and why things come together the way they do.
Antioch is a puzzle, made of pain, anger, and deception, putting it together is delightful is somewhat unnerving. -
This is a super fast read (I started and finished it in the same day where I first read 100+ pages of a completely different novel). It's weird and psychological horror-y with genuinely creepy parts.
This is Leonard's debut novel and there's a lot of really great stuff in this book, but you can also see a few places where she needs some work (the pacing is very fast and I think the novel would have benefitted from being longer). I wasn't sure if I would enjoy this book after I guessed one of the major spoilers, but it was still a really fun, creepy read. -
Stunned and overwhelmed at how good this book was! If you’re looking for a story that will immerse you in its web, really plunge you straight into the pages, this is the one. There was one point in the book where two characters were deep in discussion and a sudden knock came at their door - and I actually JUMPED! That’s how good Jessica Leonard’s writing is - it pulled me in and didn’t let go until the last page.
Leonard wastes NO time in setting up too much before jumping right into the mystery swirling around Bess Jackson in the small town of Antioch. Bess isn’t a detective but, due to the events around her, becomes obsessed with solving the mystery of a string of murders that have plagued Antioch over the past few years. Everyone’s a suspect and every new event seems to offer some clue to the truth. It starts with all the mystery and numerous suspects of an Agatha Christie novel, then adds some Hitchcock-level twists and Twin Peaks-brand weirdness. Blown away that this is the author’s debut novel!
There is a 100% chance that I will read this book again in the future.
5/5 -
....What??? I'm sorry, but that ending... Absolutely no resolution.
What does this have to do with Amelia Earhart?! I am so confused at this book. It definitely needed more editing. Nothing tied together whatsoever. -
Contains spoilers
„Antioch“ by Jessica Leonard has had me frustrated in varying degrees for the past three days, in both good and not so good ways.
I’m a details nerd, and the writing left no doubt in my mind, that we are dealing with an unreliable narrator. And that’s a good thing. But I had solid fears at the beginning that we were also dealing with an unreliable storyline. Which was the plan.
The presentation of the MC is the cause of 90% of the concern and frustration I had with the book. Right at the beginning of the book, a garbled radio message is heard through the static, which the MC, Bess, infers is a message directly to her (though it does not address her specifically) which is just madness, of course. The MC has herself, an obsession with Amelia Eckhart, and knows the conspiracy theories which surround the final transmission of Amelia.
Those conspiracies allude that the last radio transmission was misheard, and Bess decides she has misheard her own radio transmissions and concocts “evidence” from those transmissions, and that evidence leads her on a wild goose chase through Antioch seeing connections in everything she wishes to see. Leonhard presents her argument without actually stating it, leading the reader to either come to the same conclusion as myself, or any other conclusion in the exact same method that the actual death of Amelia Eckhart inspired similar theories, each as unlikely as the next. Leonhard had adroitly shown that you will see what you want to see. You will believe what you want to believe.
It’s fascinating, of course.
Now. Let’s ignore all of that for a second, because it is just a theory, about what the whole story is actually about, and let’s address the writing.
Leonhard writes well, the story does flow, regardless of i’s nonsensical storyline. The voice here is not consistent. The characters are non-consistent in their attitudes and mannerisms. Characters that have never cussed throughout the book are constantly swearing at the end of the book. Things don’t bother the MC when they should – her house is wrecked, and her notebook pages stolen (her lifelong obsession) but never-mind let’s go to bed.
What?
On the other side of the scale, “evidence” given to her which documents somebodies possible involvement in serial killings is taken as straight-up fact – because it comes in a lovely book. So, I guess it must be true. And that’s the point here. The MC believes absolutely in a truth she clings to. No explanation of why she does so is given. Her belief that she can magically hear a dead or near-dead person giving her clues to the location of a girl being held by a serial killer is manifest and takes over her entire life. Nothing else is of importance. And it must be real. If she believes it, we must too? Umm…
And it is so full of holes that the reader themselves gets frustrated by the entire series of events. The house bangs and shakes and is pounded from outside by...? No idea, it is never really explained. And the mc ignores it. Oh well. So for me, I was looking at the book the entire time thinking – this makes no sense. The author has thrown events at the MC without seemingly acknowledging the “how” of how those things happened. None of it made sense. Gary turns up with a gun. Or attacks her. Or she spots him “just so”. All total circumstantial. There is absolutely no detective work involved here. Nothing that is factual proof. Nothing but circumstance.
And that’s the point.
The ending of the book is the authors attempt at stopping the theories dead in their tracks. The entire series of non-sensical beliefs and unlikely situations are nothing. They are as ghost-like as a character that doesn’t exist (ghost, or imagination – we will never know – just like Amelia).
So the entire point of the book is to illustrate that any belief system is non-sensical. Belief in God and the devil? It can be looked at in another light and the entire theory turned on its head. Whatever you want to believe, you will find evidence that supports your theory and ignore everything that doesn’t fit it.
Who hits Bess around the head at the end of the book? We will never know. That is the entire point. It is a fictional recreation of the Amelia Eckhart death.
So if you read the reviews of this book, you get a series of people that liked the thrilling aspect of the book. Or they liked the situations the MC found herself in. Or they didn’t understand the book at all. The characters weren’t true to themselves? The situations were never explained? What the hell was the ending?
And that perfectly represents the actual core theme here – what actually did happen to Amelia Eckhart.
And as succinctly as it is possible to say, Jessica Leonard tells you in simple truth at the end. One sentence to rip aside all of the bullshit that you want desperately to believe.
People that don’t understand the story here don’t understand that the actual story was the last line of the book. And everything else that came before it was just an attempt to illustrate chasing a rabbit down a rabbit hole that may or may not exist.
So, whilst I think I got the point of the story, the journey here was frustrating, uncomfortable, and at times annoying.
I’m upgrading a frustrated 3 star to a four-star because this story was actually not the actual story at all. And whilst it is clever and achieved its goal with THIS reader, I think I’m pretty much on my own. So – Jessica - 🤜🤛 this was brilliant, but I think you are too clever for the likes of myself and the rest of us idiots on the planet. That I got this was because I overthink stuff.
I look forward to reading more from Mrs Leonard, and hope I live up to her continued expectations of me. -
I’m not much a book reviewer but I know how important for indie books a review is, so here goes.
I liked this book. I basically read it in three sittings, I couldn’t put it down. Antioch was written in a fast paced style, I’d liken it to a screenplay. Long novels are great but I love quick ones that are a breeze and that’s what this one was, a quick read with a story that kept me guessing.
Look, I told you I don’t really know how to review. It was well written aside from one minor editing error that I noticed (it was really no big deal but someone pointed it out in there review.)
The story was interesting enough and I even feel like I learned about Amelia Earhart. It’s pretty unpredictable but I will say it’s fitting that Paul Tremblay wrote a blurb for it.
Yeah so if you made it through my ramblings, maybe read this book. It’s quick and breezy and will keep you guessing.
I’ll definitely read the authors next book. -
2.5*
-
This book has a great hook, though it slows down a lot in the middle, and then never actually concludes. It was hard to stop reading it, though, which is a sign of a good writer. I'll see if I can track down some more of Leonard's work to see how it compares.
-
Review coming soon!
-
2.5/3 stars
I'm not really sure how to express how I feel after reading Antioch. The premise was so interesting - a bookseller living in a small town who is obsessed with the conspiracies surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, who thinks she receives a message on her short wave radio about another woman who is missing.
That's incredible, right? Right up my alley.
The beginning was fantastic, with a few scenes that were genuinely eerie: strange knocks on walls, doorbells rang by invisible hands, a main character who loses large spaces of time. It was making me anxious! But boy, did my feelings on this change quickly. Suddenly it seemed like the author had no direction. There were weak red herrings, like everywhere? I stopped being afraid for the main character. Her behavior didn't seem to makes sense for the situation she was in. There were a ton of loose plot ends, things that I was actually curious about that were never answered. The ending was confusing. There were also a few errors i noticed that should have been picked up during editing.
I really would like to read more from Jessica Leonard. This is just her start! I can tell she has a perfectly sinister imagination, and I hope to see more of it in the future. -
Jessica Leonard's Antioch is a strange ride through a peculiar mystery tale revolving around a serial killer, conspiracy theories, and (as strange as it might seem) Amelia Earhart. All of this transpires in a town that feels both small and yet large enough that people can maintain that sort of invisibility you only find in larger cities. It feels like an unreal place, one that can only exist in our imaginations, not dissimilar to the fictional town of Twin Peaks. In fact, if I had to compare this novel to anything, I would have to say that it has a lot of that Twin Peaks feel to it...and that's a good thing.
In the end, I'm pretty sure I have it figured out and--assuming I'm right--I had the story figured out in the ninth chapter, a little over midway through the book. The problem is, you can never be more than pretty sure that you have it figured out. There's so much uncertainty and haziness to the tale, that you just can't be 100% certain. This is achieved, in large part, by Leonard's ability to develop and then focus on the least dependable and stable character in Bess. It's not so much that we have an unreliable narrator to this story, just an ungodly unreliable prism through which the events are being filtered.
To refer to Antioch as a phantasmagoria is perhaps putting it mildly. You'll just have to experience it for yourself, and it is quite the experience. -
I feel this isn’t so much a horror novel as it is a well-written character study about a woman trying to hold on as she slowly loses her mind (there’s a really cool chapter in second person that really underscores this sense of disassociation). It’s about the price we pay for our obsessions (starting with the protagonist’s HAM radio and its connection to her father, to Amelia Earhart, and ending with her desire to save women from “Vlad the Impaler”) and the ways it damages us and our relationships with the people in our lives.
Jessica Leonard did a great job creating a complicated character in Bess, and setting the scene in the kind of town where “things like this aren’t supposed to happen.” While everyone questions her sanity along the way and force their way into her life in threatening ways, the real menace in Bess’ life is the way her obsessive nature engulfs her and drives her toward solving the mystery of all those brutalized women. It was quite an enjoyable read that had the vibe of that quirky, low-budget psychological thriller you saw in an empty theater, with a hint of sadness because so many people were missing out on something special. -
Antioch is an engagingly written, wicked good blend of mystery, psychological thriller, and horror. Well paced, with great choice of elements nicely woven to keep things interesting throughout. I love the inclusion of the Amelia Earhart history and its importance to the main character - this one will definitely make you think.
-
“Antioch” reads (to me at least) like an old-school mystery “cozy” for much of its length—albeit a cozy interrupted by periodic moments of genuine terror. I identify those pages as being akin to a cozy mostly due to how effortless they read. It’s just easy, fun reading that carries the reader along from start to finish. But it’s easy reading of the approachable but literate variety (think Bradbury, or more modernly, Keene’s better stuff) rather than the banal and repetitive (think James Patterson). The scariest images and sequences work all the better by being doled out sparingly amidst such a quick and pleasant pace. I particularly dug the voyeur view of the serial killer’s house (whether that was really it or not) and the dream imagery we get from Bess. I read a lot of different stuff but am always drawn back to genre fiction, particularly horror and this was one of the better first novels in the genre I read this (or last) year. While it’s usually a safe bet that an author’s first novel is never really their first (as most have a trunk-novel or two and at least a half-dozen half-starts) I got that feeling with this book a bit more than usual because it feels polished and sure of itself. The dialogue is great, never clunky or eye-rolling; the characters are all well-rounded and interesting, the thematic threads and extra details (from Amelia Earhart and short-wave radios to quirky church Bible studies and the lore of Saints by way of small town bookstores and coffee shops) grant the book a lot more texture and uniqueness than most serial-killer thrillers have. And without providing any spoilers I have to say that I did not expect that ending and it was one that I sat with for a while wrestling over whether I liked it or not (which to me is usually a sign of a quality ending). On his cover blurb Paul Tremblay praised the book for its ambiguity (and side-note, that’s a pretty impressive endorsement for a first time novelist to obtain as Tremblay is maybe one of the three best working horror novelists of the moment) and I’d say he’s spot on as that’s what ultimately sells this book as something different from the pack. While part of me wanted more resolution I’m satisfied as a reader to be left hanging a bit, I suppose. The only criticism (and it’s a mild one at that) I have is that for most of the work I got the sense that the town could be a character, could be distinctive and as important as everything else going on but that it never quite became so—for a book named after the town it is set in I wanted to know that town a bit more. Anyway, “Antioch” is an impressive debut novel in pretty much every regard.
