This review first appeared in Booklist on October 1, 2026.
Paige Keller has spent her life trying to forget the Kaleidoscope, the infamous island resort where, years ago, most of her mother’s senior class died under mysterious circumstances. Casey Keller survived, but the hotel would continue to cast a shadow over those who got away. Shortly after Paige’s birth, Casey went back to the Kaleidoscope—and died there. Now Paige has returned home for the tragedy’s twenty-fifth anniversary, determined to pay her respects one last time before finally leaving the haunted past behind. But when KJ, her estranged best friend and the daughter of another Kaleidoscope survivor, disappears, Paige fears that yet another person she loves has been lured into the dark depths of the hotel. Following KJ into the ruinous resort, Paige discovers something far more frightening than the human horrors that unfolded there: a ravenous nightmare lurking beneath its once-luxurious facade. Gould deftly delves into themes of generational trauma, emotional neglect, and moral reckoning in this delirious, fluorescent fever dream. Recommend to readers who enjoyed Kate Alice Marshall’s These Fleeting Shadows (2022) and Linda Cheng’s Beautiful Brutal Bodies (2025).