An ancient family curse roars back to life in Sara Sligar's superbly dark second novel, Vantage Point. Sligar's fiendishly clever thriller delivers a hefty dose of horror-tinged suspense while expertly navigating contemporary themes such as online violations of privacy and the head-spinning speed with which artificial intelligence can manipulate people's lives.
Orphaned years earlier in their teens, Teddy and Clara are heirs to the famed Wieland fortune and Vantage Point, a majestic cliffside island estate in Maine. Teddy is the steady older brother who has rescued Clara from self-destruction too many times to count. Clara's heart-wrenching struggle with disordered eating is portrayed with compassionate, devastating realism. The story opens with Teddy launching his Senate campaign. He is contentedly married to Clara's childhood best friend, Jess, a woman troubled by her own past.
Vantage Point is narrated by Clara and Jess in alternating chapters, a prism through which their interlocking stories collide and flow. When the Internet blows up with compromising videos of Clara, Teddy's scandal-free political campaign is suddenly in disarray. Whether or not the videos are real or "deepfakes," the damage is done. Meanwhile, Clara is haunted by bizarre visions. Is her illness interfering with her mind, or is there something more nefarious at play? And if it's the dreaded curse, which family member is it after?
Sligar (Take Me Apart) portends a terrifying future where, thanks to technology, reality is whatever we choose to make it. In a literary parable for our unsettling times, Vantage Point delivers an immersive, urgent drama reminding readers that sometimes it's the ones who seem the most broken that are the strongest. --Shahina Piyarali