REVIEW: Lakewood

Lena needs money, badly. 

Her grandmother just died, leaving Lena in charge of her own mother, who is sick with a mystery illness. She has seizures, speech aphasia, memory loss, migraines. They’re up to their eyeballs in medical debt, so when a government experiment disguised as a shipping company asks her to be a participant, Lena finds herself unable to say no. As a Black woman, Lena knows the dangers of medical experimentation, but money is money.

The horror slowly builds as Lena discovers more truths about the high-paying, top secret job she has just signed her life over to. She’s forced to lie to her friends and family about her day-to-day routines, which include being a guinea pig on trial drugs designed to do anything from changing one’s eye color to curing dementia. As the story continues, it becomes more disjointed and the reader begins to distrust the accuracy of anyone’s statements. Lena becomes foggier and the experiments are clearly taking a toll. This was cited in other reviews as the downfall of the book, but the transition into unreliable narration forces the reader into Lena’s mindset.

While at first glance I would consider this more of a science fiction novel, some of the descriptions that start happening about halfway through the book are jarringly horrifying. After these moments, we slip seamlessly back into the mundanity of everyday life. The horrors are normalized and swept under the rug.

As a short, creepy, fun novel, Lakewood by Megan Giddings explores medical racism, family love, and how much a body is worth.

RATING: ☆☆☆✬