'Highly readable, twisty and shrewd... utterly enjoyable' HANYA YANAGIHARA (on Instagram) 'The most disturbingly enjoyable read I’ve had in a long time' EMMA HEALEY 'Diabolically good... a taut, wicked masterpiece' MONA AWAD 'Sank its teeth into me from the first page, and didn’t let go' KATIE KITAMURA

Havoc centers around an elderly protagonist and her rivalry with a young child during their COVID-era stay in a Luxor hotel, but if we had known just what Bollen meant by 'elderly' and 'child' here, we would have avoided the novel altogether. The central plot is that an old woman who likes to meddle in other people's relationships has arrived in Luxor after fleeing a couple-intervention-gone-wrong in Europe, but as she tries to sabotage another family she perceives as doomed, a child spots her espionage and tries to blackmail her, leading to a spiraling tit-for-tat that ends in chaos. The sentence doesn't seem implausible until you know that the old woman is 81 and the child is 8 and exactly how they snipe at each other. Did you know that 8 year olds can use social media to execute complex cons on family members for dirt? Did you also know that octogenarians who get ankle pain walking up stairs can drag dead bodies across courtyards? Well, Bollen hangs his story on these moments and more. None of us at NUBClub could accept this nonsense. While there are parts of the book that reflect what seem to be true moments of life abroad, the main action of the story just keeps going into truly unbelievable places. If the book weren't so centered on this rivalry as the prime mover, we could be more forgiving of some stretches of credulity, but Bollen clearly wants the protagonist to ruin her life and when the vehicle to all the destruction involves things so difficult to swallow, it's really hard to stay committed to it. Several of us admitted to just skimming the last half of the novel after it, to use our phrase, 'jumped the gigolo' with a truly ridiculous murder scene. Bollen also does not seem to understand foreshadowing here. The end of the novel includes several revelations about how the protagonist has lied about her past, but all of that is revealed in literally the last three chapters of the story. (Of course, it's possible this was signaled better and we just missed it while reeling from the last crazy choice Bollen made.) To be fair, Bollen had some good ideas about these twists and if they had been grounded in a more sane plot, they could have been effective. But you can't write a novel about the complex turns of deep manipulations and impulsive actions when we have to accept implausible moments. A child bakes and poisons a signature hotel treat to try to kill the protagonist. I seriously don't know how to justify that. This was a dud, NUBClub visitors. There are much better novels out there to spend your time on.