Laurel Hightower

It's filled with all that makes a good paranormal/horror story... the weird, the bizarre, the unknown, and the unexplainable, and more chills than you can imagine. Addy is haunted by the voice of her ex-husband. No, he isn't dead or "on to the other side". His voice isn't even anything supernatural. His words just constantly sound off in her head at unexpected times. His unwanted opinions and his equally unneeded judgements are her constant companions. But this story isn't about that jerk. show more There is another man whose voice is currently present in Addy’s life as well, he's on her CB radio. Mads, a trucker...a complete stranger who appears to be a really nice guy. He's been helping Addy through the mountains of West Virginia as the weather quickly begins to deteriorate. Things don't go as planned for Addy and Mads. Raise your hand if that surprises you. Addy is dealt both psychological and physical blows, and she soon finds herself trapped in an unescapable nightmare. There are many, many, truly creepy, spine-chilling moments in this story. The small cast of characters, the isolated and desolate road, and the darkness all blend in to form into a palpable sense of claustrophobia and isolation. While traveling with Addy it's easy to forget that it's "just a story", and you will soon find yourself looking around, over your shoulder. You will soon forget that you're safe in your house, or your bed or your car. Through Addy you almost become her and start to feel the weight and the presence of the darkness, the tingling, crawling sensation of being watched, of hidden eyes tracking your every move. The author, Laurel Hightower did a magnificent job of dropping the reader into the pages and between the covers of the book...and, just when you think you are safe, and it really is ONLY a story...slamming it shut! This is Horror AT IT"S BEST...absolutely solid gold. show less

Addy is taking a 500 mile road trip on her own when she ends up on a highway to hell that will test her sanity and her will to live.

"It came out of nowhere."

She is stranded on a dark stretch of road that is known for it's weird happenings and there's no help in sight. Addy has a history of not trusting her own judgement, letting her ex-husband talk over her, talk down to her, and decide for her. Now she only has herself to rely on.

This is my first time reading this author, and I was only show more about 10 pages in when I jumped online to order her previous book because her writing is exquisite. The scares are many, the pace is breathtaking, and at 106 pages I could have easily finished it in one sitting except for the fact that I wanted to savor it, and that just maybe there were times I was afraid to turn the page.
Below is terrifying, freaky, and yet somehow uplifting. Highly recommended to all horror fans.


My thanks to Ghoulish Books and PMM Publishing for the advance copy. show less

Laurel Hightower's novella, 'Crossroads' has tremendous power. It brings fresh meaning to the term nightmarish because everything in this novella feels real, even the things that rationally can't be real and agency seems both imperative and impossible

The story takes place at a literal, metaphorical and emotional crossroads. Chris, the grieving mother of a teenage son who died two years ago, is perfectly aware that, while she believes she's making rational choices, she might simply be show more delusional. She believes she has a chance to resurrect her son. She doesn't know how any of it works or why it's happening and she has no way of finding out. So, guided by the hope of saving her son and driven by a fear of losing him by failing to act, she sets out on a path of escalating sacrifice.

The surface narrative - what Chris chooses to do and what its consequences are - is gripping and so emotionally powerful that I was torn between needing to know the outcome and fearing that I would flinch at what I discovered. Chris not only becomes real but you can see that she has finally reached a point where, after years of grief and depression, her life is worth living. You can also see that her need for her son is driving on a path that could cost her everything. I became so invested in Chris that there were times when I just wanted to shout out - 'Don't Do This.'

What makes the novella outstanding is that, in addition to the tension of the surface narrative, we have a meta-narrative about motherhood and identity and sacrifice that is powerful in its own right and we have an alternate narrative that places Chris as a victim of something dark and supernatural.

I think Hightower's achievement is that she doesn't make us choose between these three narratives. She makes them all seem true, at least some of the time.

This isn't an easy book to read. There's too much pain in it for it to be a book I could consume in one session, even though the ebook is only ninety-six pages. Yet I kept coming back to it and it kept getting better.

I highly recommend this one to you. show less

I picked up Below because I'd been blown away by the power of Laurel Hightower's novella Crossroads about grief and sacrifice and despair and hope and what happens when they all become focused on the loss of a child.

Below is a very different kind of story but it hit me just as hard. It's a disturbing, creature-feature, lone-woman-in-danger, action-packed story that became more and more unsettling as I settled into the situation and our heroine started to reveal who she was.

Part of what show more made the story unsettling for me was that it refused to follow a well-worn genre path. This is part horror, part science fiction, part thriller and all strange. I liked that not all of the strangeness was explained. How can you explain the truly strange anyway?

The pace of the story kept accelerating but it didn't rush along in a straight line to an inevitable conclusion. Instead, I had to keep reassessing what was really happening and why. Like Addy, our heroine, every time I thought I knew what was going on, it turned out that something different and worse was coming my way.

The story starts with a fast pace and a tight focus that never lets up. We begin with a simple statement, part shock, part fear, part denial, part apology: It came out of nowhere and not a pause for breath after that. The statement is made by Addy, a lone woman in an almost deserted truckstop at night, on a remote mountain road in winter with a storm coming on. She'd be driving when suddenly, it came out of nowhere and changed her life. Now she's holding a coffee cup in her shaking hands and she's about to change the life of a trucker, the only other customer in the truckstop.

It takes a while to discover what it really was that came out of nowhere and who it came for and why, but even in that first scene, even before the darkness and the pain and the fear, it was clear that it would come again and that things were going to get worse.

What I liked most about the story was that, without slowing the pace of loosening the focus, this thriller became focused on the heroine as much as the plot. Addy is not the typical heroine. She's a recently divorced woman whose confidence has been maimed by the years that she's spent with her overbearing husband. She was doing something daring for the first time in years, driving through the night to meet friends and then it came out of nowhere nowhere. Addy isn't a superhero, She has no special powers or expertise that will be revealed in extremis. She's a woman who has only just begun to rediscover her confidence in herself and who is about to be plunged into an ordeal that she may not survive. As the story rushes forward, Addy's personality is revealed along the way by every reaction she has and every choice she makes. By the end, I understood her better than I understood what had happened to her. I'm pretty sure she felt the same way.

I've been impressed by what I've seen from Laurel Hightower so far. I'm now looking forward to reading her debut book, Whispers In The Dark. show less