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Haven: A Novel
A summer retreat to an elite island enclave owned by a Big Tech company becomes a mother’s worst nightmare in this gripping thriller
After months of financial strain and escalating arguments, Caroline is relieved when her husband, Adam, secures a job at Corridor, a prestigious Big Tech company. Though his long hours on top-secret projects often leave Caroline alone with their newborn son, Gabriel, the life-changing income seems worth the sacrifice.
When Adam suggests a summer retreat to Haven, the exclusive island community that serves as Corridor’s base of operations, Caroline agrees, hoping the sun-soaked paradise will help Adam relax and bring their family closer. But she can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t quite right about the town. Though Adam assures her of their safety, the locals’ behavior is oddly secretive and ritualistic—even cultish. It’s clear that Corridor hasn’t resolved tensions about the way the company is transforming the island. And it doesn’t help that Adam’s colleagues seem to have a few strange beliefs of their own.
When Caroline wakes to discover that Gabriel is missing, her worst fears are confirmed. Desperate and unsure of whom to trust, she must race to find her son—and pull back the curtain on this elite enclave—before he is lost to the island forever.
Tensely plotted and terrifyingly prescient, Haven is a taut, darkly compelling exploration of the costs of innovation, the far limits of human progress, and the risks we’re willing to take for a brighter future.
After months of financial strain and escalating arguments, Caroline is relieved when her husband, Adam, secures a job at Corridor, a prestigious Big Tech company. Though his long hours on top-secret projects often leave Caroline alone with their newborn son, Gabriel, the life-changing income seems worth the sacrifice.
When Adam suggests a summer retreat to Haven, the exclusive island community that serves as Corridor’s base of operations, Caroline agrees, hoping the sun-soaked paradise will help Adam relax and bring their family closer. But she can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t quite right about the town. Though Adam assures her of their safety, the locals’ behavior is oddly secretive and ritualistic—even cultish. It’s clear that Corridor hasn’t resolved tensions about the way the company is transforming the island. And it doesn’t help that Adam’s colleagues seem to have a few strange beliefs of their own.
When Caroline wakes to discover that Gabriel is missing, her worst fears are confirmed. Desperate and unsure of whom to trust, she must race to find her son—and pull back the curtain on this elite enclave—before he is lost to the island forever.
Tensely plotted and terrifyingly prescient, Haven is a taut, darkly compelling exploration of the costs of innovation, the far limits of human progress, and the risks we’re willing to take for a brighter future.
Hardcover
Published July 15, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 96 reviews
April 9, 2026
An interesting book. I think the low average rating is totally unwarranted and I’m not sure what is going on there?
Thematically it touches on the excesses of power and money driving big tech to ever more outrageous actions, and the idea that the people who involve themselves always have too much and still never enough. This is used to justify even the most obviously ethically corrupt behaviour.
The story unfolds these ideas in a manner similar to The Compound, so you could use that as a kind of indicator about whether you find books like this compelling or opaque in meaning.
Thematically it touches on the excesses of power and money driving big tech to ever more outrageous actions, and the idea that the people who involve themselves always have too much and still never enough. This is used to justify even the most obviously ethically corrupt behaviour.
The story unfolds these ideas in a manner similar to The Compound, so you could use that as a kind of indicator about whether you find books like this compelling or opaque in meaning.
June 22, 2026
I agree with the reviewers wondering why on earth so many people have downrated Haven. I was pleasantly surprised by both the originality and the thematic depth of the plot. The prose style itself, with short sentences in times of panic i.e., does an excellent job of imitating the thought process of trauma. The style and grammar are perfectly sculpted throughout. And the shocking imagery depicting the novel's ending will probably stay with me for years.
Haven is marketed as a horror novel, and while there is no question that it contains plenty of creepy, eerie, unsettling images leading up to and surrounding the main conflict (lost/kidnapped baby), I would classify it more as a thriller with a side order of horror. There are deeply upsetting moments most definitely, but I was never truly in need of turning on more lights, for example. Despite this marketing misstep, Haven is a wonderful read offering thematically layered, existential, thought provoking discussions that occur in and among disturbing events. I truly appreciated its clever, unique, indirect approach to tackling the subject of climate crisis. And Ms. Katz's novel explores many subjects beyond the health of our planet. She offers up our most sacred social constructs--such as motherhood, love, and marriage--as though to unapologetically warn readers that surviving the future we seem hellbent on manifesting will require not only an acrobatic sense of morality, but ultimately, a redefinition of what makes us human.
Basic plot premise:
Caroline, mother of newborn baby Gabriel, accompanies her husband, Adam, to a private, upscale island partially owned by the company where Adam works. They are sharing a beach house with Adam's workplace colleagues for the entire summer....or, at least, that is the plan. Right off the bat, Caroline feels extremely uncomfortable. She's the only one with a baby (a five month old whom Adam seems incapable of helping her with), Adam's friends seem to revel in shocking her or hitting on her, and the locals on the island are more than a little bit odd. Disturbing events begin to happen slowly at first, but eventually Caroline just can't deny that something is deeply wrong on the island, with her husband, and with his friends. She fears for the safety of her son.
It is really difficult to say more about the storyline without giving away all of the surprising twists, but I will say that no brief summary can encapsulate how bizarre, timely, and disturbing Haven actually is. The tone of the ending is relatively calm, and that sense of calm contrasts so starkly with what is actually happening--it's a portrait of a silent, yet deafening scream and one forecast by all of the silences forced upon or embraced by the characters throughout.
Main Themes:
*corrupt big business as supreme, authoritarian government
*marriage as institution (open marriages vs monogamy)
*motherhood as political statement vs function
*individuality (the individual as irreplaceably unique)
*art (in this case photography & theater) vs utilitarianism
Trigger warning: If you are a brand new parent or a newlywed, you may want to put this one on hold for a while
Haven is marketed as a horror novel, and while there is no question that it contains plenty of creepy, eerie, unsettling images leading up to and surrounding the main conflict (lost/kidnapped baby), I would classify it more as a thriller with a side order of horror. There are deeply upsetting moments most definitely, but I was never truly in need of turning on more lights, for example. Despite this marketing misstep, Haven is a wonderful read offering thematically layered, existential, thought provoking discussions that occur in and among disturbing events. I truly appreciated its clever, unique, indirect approach to tackling the subject of climate crisis. And Ms. Katz's novel explores many subjects beyond the health of our planet. She offers up our most sacred social constructs--such as motherhood, love, and marriage--as though to unapologetically warn readers that surviving the future we seem hellbent on manifesting will require not only an acrobatic sense of morality, but ultimately, a redefinition of what makes us human.
Basic plot premise:
Caroline, mother of newborn baby Gabriel, accompanies her husband, Adam, to a private, upscale island partially owned by the company where Adam works. They are sharing a beach house with Adam's workplace colleagues for the entire summer....or, at least, that is the plan. Right off the bat, Caroline feels extremely uncomfortable. She's the only one with a baby (a five month old whom Adam seems incapable of helping her with), Adam's friends seem to revel in shocking her or hitting on her, and the locals on the island are more than a little bit odd. Disturbing events begin to happen slowly at first, but eventually Caroline just can't deny that something is deeply wrong on the island, with her husband, and with his friends. She fears for the safety of her son.
It is really difficult to say more about the storyline without giving away all of the surprising twists, but I will say that no brief summary can encapsulate how bizarre, timely, and disturbing Haven actually is. The tone of the ending is relatively calm, and that sense of calm contrasts so starkly with what is actually happening--it's a portrait of a silent, yet deafening scream and one forecast by all of the silences forced upon or embraced by the characters throughout.
Main Themes:
*corrupt big business as supreme, authoritarian government
*marriage as institution (open marriages vs monogamy)
*motherhood as political statement vs function
*individuality (the individual as irreplaceably unique)
*art (in this case photography & theater) vs utilitarianism
Trigger warning: If you are a brand new parent or a newlywed, you may want to put this one on hold for a while
March 18, 2026
this was very alright. definitely was missing a lot of explanation and world building because everything was explained at the very end while the rest of the book not much happened.
thank you to netgalley for an advanced copy of this book!
thank you to netgalley for an advanced copy of this book!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Haven tells the story of Caroline and her husband taking a summer retreat to Haven, an exclusive island, with their baby. Of course, nothing goes as planned, and everything slowly goes from bad to worse. This blurb itself is very promising, especially with the mysterious yet prestigious Big Tech company Corridor, the town that isn't quite right, the odd cultish local behavior, etc. But, well ...
The blurb itself made us expect some scenes that would be truly heart pounding and thrilling, along with other mysteries that might later be solved, both about Haven and Corridor. And to uncover all of that, of course, we need a little buildup, slowly revealing what's actually strange about the town or even Caroline herself and her friend. But unfortunately, I feel it's all a bit too half-done.
There are names like Haven, Corridor, Mosaic, or HEOL thrown everywhere. Promising and giving a tiny bit of sci-fi vibes and genre. But knowing what or who exactly they are is never clear enough. The worldbuilding feels incomplete. I often wonder if this is set in the near future or modern day but with more advanced technology? Because the company seems like a very advanced company. But that's all.
And I think, what the blurb says about the 'odd locals' or 'odd town' isn't very odd to me. I didn't feel scared or even concerned about whatever Caroline sees. Nothing really weird or traumatic happens. The characters too. I didn't find them really interesting. In fact, they're all super annoying to me. Nothing really stands out about them, and this also has something to do with the writing.
I'm not saying the author's writing is bad. It's good, even. Only when it comes to narration. Because once it comes to dialogue, the writing changes from good to bad. These characters speak childishly. I rolled my eyes so many times when they spoke nonsense and completely unimportant things. I'd rather read one page paragraphs than one page of them bickering about whatever the hell it is.
So, in the end, I am not satisfied with this book.
The blurb itself made us expect some scenes that would be truly heart pounding and thrilling, along with other mysteries that might later be solved, both about Haven and Corridor. And to uncover all of that, of course, we need a little buildup, slowly revealing what's actually strange about the town or even Caroline herself and her friend. But unfortunately, I feel it's all a bit too half-done.
There are names like Haven, Corridor, Mosaic, or HEOL thrown everywhere. Promising and giving a tiny bit of sci-fi vibes and genre. But knowing what or who exactly they are is never clear enough. The worldbuilding feels incomplete. I often wonder if this is set in the near future or modern day but with more advanced technology? Because the company seems like a very advanced company. But that's all.
And I think, what the blurb says about the 'odd locals' or 'odd town' isn't very odd to me. I didn't feel scared or even concerned about whatever Caroline sees. Nothing really weird or traumatic happens. The characters too. I didn't find them really interesting. In fact, they're all super annoying to me. Nothing really stands out about them, and this also has something to do with the writing.
I'm not saying the author's writing is bad. It's good, even. Only when it comes to narration. Because once it comes to dialogue, the writing changes from good to bad. These characters speak childishly. I rolled my eyes so many times when they spoke nonsense and completely unimportant things. I'd rather read one page paragraphs than one page of them bickering about whatever the hell it is.
So, in the end, I am not satisfied with this book.
March 31, 2026
Sigh. This was like having a bad dream. Dreams don’t make much sense, and neither did Haven. I was happy to wake up from it.
It saddens me because this should have been my thing. I love strange and unsettling novels. But Haven just wasn’t right at all. I hated the characters and the story was quite unpleasant long before that annoying ending. I will pass on this author in the future.
I am immensely grateful to Penguin Books and NetGalley for my copy. All opinions are my own.
It saddens me because this should have been my thing. I love strange and unsettling novels. But Haven just wasn’t right at all. I hated the characters and the story was quite unpleasant long before that annoying ending. I will pass on this author in the future.
I am immensely grateful to Penguin Books and NetGalley for my copy. All opinions are my own.
June 7, 2026
Caroline is ready for a break. Off to stay in a summer house on an island for the summer with her husband and her 3-month old son. And her husband's friends. As the only ones with a new family, Caroline isn't excited to have this vacation surrounded by the couples her husband works with and knows well but it's worth it for the break and to not be struggling financially anymore.
But the time on the island quickly becomes dreamlike, as Caroline's not getting anymore sleep or help from her husband than she did at home. Not only that, but it's just a few nights in and her husband is leaving to go work - he says he just has to.
This was such a wild story. I kept spiraling with ideas, wondering what would be going on. I appreciate that the author didn't hold back - there were some really gory and gross parts that really hit home just how real the other answers were. The layers were good and the fever-dream feel of the character and the time on the island kept the tension well-paced and kept me intrigued. The ending was shocking in many ways and pulled it all together for me. I did this as an audio and the narrator was great and really added to the atmosphere and the layers of the main character. I liked it!
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
But the time on the island quickly becomes dreamlike, as Caroline's not getting anymore sleep or help from her husband than she did at home. Not only that, but it's just a few nights in and her husband is leaving to go work - he says he just has to.
This was such a wild story. I kept spiraling with ideas, wondering what would be going on. I appreciate that the author didn't hold back - there were some really gory and gross parts that really hit home just how real the other answers were. The layers were good and the fever-dream feel of the character and the time on the island kept the tension well-paced and kept me intrigued. The ending was shocking in many ways and pulled it all together for me. I did this as an audio and the narrator was great and really added to the atmosphere and the layers of the main character. I liked it!
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
May 5, 2026
First of all it took over 50% of the way through for the plot to actually start and this book is only 230 pages… the first half was so pointless and didn’t add anything to the story. And it says on the back of the book Carolines son goes missing. Why does that happen after the 50% mark? And the last part of the book was not worth the time spent reading about these insufferable characters. It was trying to be some weird trippy book but it didn’t deliver at all
June 12, 2026
Mystery on Epstein Island filled with Tech Oligarch minions. That’s what this reads like.
The characters were too flat for my liking and the plot points felt all over the place. This read similarly to a contemporary C Tier TV show or movie. It’s not horrible, but it lacks depth and I felt like it had more potential.
I felt very disappointed in the chosen ending, I felt that there could’ve been a larger reaction to the events that happened to Caroline.
The characters were too flat for my liking and the plot points felt all over the place. This read similarly to a contemporary C Tier TV show or movie. It’s not horrible, but it lacks depth and I felt like it had more potential.
I felt very disappointed in the chosen ending, I felt that there could’ve been a larger reaction to the events that happened to Caroline.
March 21, 2026
Sad to give this a rating so low, but it's unfortunately how I feel! Haven has such an intriguing concept that felt wobbly upon execution. Some parts were cool (the fever dream element of it all, some specific descriptions) but for the most part it really was just okay. It picks up near the end but I felt like we didn't get much explanation on key things in the beginning which meant the moment where everything comes together isn't as satisfying as it could be. I was reminded of The Compound, interestingly, but if we'd gotten even less description of the world outside. I read this one on someone's recommendation and I'm glad I checked it out, but ultimately it wasn't for me!
December 5, 2025
A big thank you to Viking Penguin | Penguin Books, Netgalley, and Ani Katz for providing an ARC upon request!
This is an interesting short story that's half thriller, half current-day science fiction. It is about a new mother named Caroline who is married to a high-ranking executive in the tech sector (a la Silicon Valley and your average 'tech bro') and they go on a retreat to a mysterious island called Haven. Residing in a literal glass house with her husband and several of his friends, Caroline's life slowly begins to unravel in more ways than one, and the catalyst is the disappearance of her three month-old son, Gabriel.
Haven is one of those books that really hinges on how much you like and/or can tolerate an unreliable narrator. Caroline's POV tends to range from reliable to downright fever dream territory, and eventually the surrealism reaches Jodorowsky levels of bizarre. There's some reasons for this that can be inferred from the text in between the lines, but even that can be brought into question towards the end of the book. The characters aren't very likable by any means, but it is interesting to read about their backstories and learn where they stand in their Silicon Valley tech bro environment.
I got really into this book around the midway point. The beginning had me weary, wondering if it was going to be a 'female struggle' book with how Caroline described being a mom and a wife, but once details about Caroline are revealed it made me like her more as a morally grey protagonist. Afterwards, I couldn't stop reading because her and her friend's flaws actually made me more fascinated with her character.
However, I don't think it really sticks the landing at the end. I feel like it's a victim of its own short length, clocking in at 250 pages. This feels like a book that could have really benefitted from an extra 100 pages or so, as the last fifty pages felt like a breakneck pace compared to the rest of the book. I also wasn't crazy with how it ended, as it felt a little too much like tropey science fiction mixed with current day conspiracy theory. When I read the big reveal I couldn't help but feel like the Whoopi Goldberg "....okay." clip.
In conclusion, this is a short read that, regardless of where you fall on fever dream storytelling and unlikable characters, should keep you interested in reading more. It is not a female struggle book, rather a book about tech bro corruption and oligarchy, that slowly devolves into a dreamlike haze of events. Stick with it past the first two chapters and you may be pleasantly surprised,
This is an interesting short story that's half thriller, half current-day science fiction. It is about a new mother named Caroline who is married to a high-ranking executive in the tech sector (a la Silicon Valley and your average 'tech bro') and they go on a retreat to a mysterious island called Haven. Residing in a literal glass house with her husband and several of his friends, Caroline's life slowly begins to unravel in more ways than one, and the catalyst is the disappearance of her three month-old son, Gabriel.
Haven is one of those books that really hinges on how much you like and/or can tolerate an unreliable narrator. Caroline's POV tends to range from reliable to downright fever dream territory, and eventually the surrealism reaches Jodorowsky levels of bizarre. There's some reasons for this that can be inferred from the text in between the lines, but even that can be brought into question towards the end of the book. The characters aren't very likable by any means, but it is interesting to read about their backstories and learn where they stand in their Silicon Valley tech bro environment.
I got really into this book around the midway point. The beginning had me weary, wondering if it was going to be a 'female struggle' book with how Caroline described being a mom and a wife, but once details about Caroline are revealed it made me like her more as a morally grey protagonist. Afterwards, I couldn't stop reading because her and her friend's flaws actually made me more fascinated with her character.
However, I don't think it really sticks the landing at the end. I feel like it's a victim of its own short length, clocking in at 250 pages. This feels like a book that could have really benefitted from an extra 100 pages or so, as the last fifty pages felt like a breakneck pace compared to the rest of the book. I also wasn't crazy with how it ended, as it felt a little too much like tropey science fiction mixed with current day conspiracy theory. When I read the big reveal I couldn't help but feel like the Whoopi Goldberg "....okay." clip.
In conclusion, this is a short read that, regardless of where you fall on fever dream storytelling and unlikable characters, should keep you interested in reading more. It is not a female struggle book, rather a book about tech bro corruption and oligarchy, that slowly devolves into a dreamlike haze of events. Stick with it past the first two chapters and you may be pleasantly surprised,
October 6, 2025
thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-arc!
when a book starts to enter fever dream territory, I’m already preparing myself for an underwhelming conclusion. nothing can be surprising because everything is too abstract and nothing is real and the characters feel like caricatures. that was my issue the back half of this book, but I really enjoyed the first half! I was so intrigued to figure out what was going on not only on the island but also with the tech company, the relationship dynamics, and to figure out everyone’s motive(s). unfortunately due to previously mentioned swan dive into fever dream vibes I didn’t get a super satisfying answer to those questions but alas. I do still recommend!
when a book starts to enter fever dream territory, I’m already preparing myself for an underwhelming conclusion. nothing can be surprising because everything is too abstract and nothing is real and the characters feel like caricatures. that was my issue the back half of this book, but I really enjoyed the first half! I was so intrigued to figure out what was going on not only on the island but also with the tech company, the relationship dynamics, and to figure out everyone’s motive(s). unfortunately due to previously mentioned swan dive into fever dream vibes I didn’t get a super satisfying answer to those questions but alas. I do still recommend!
Did Not Finish
April 9, 2026I honestly can't stand this type of "nothing is what it seems" genre of storytelling in my old age. Signing up for hundreds of pages of a story that ends up being completely false is aggravating. On occasion, this trope works for me, but that is rare.
March 6, 2026
“Haven” is a short sophomore novel (250 pages) from Ani Katz. Her previous work in 2020 was also a 220 page thriller called “A Good Man,” another story about a morally grey man. The main protagonist in “Haven” is Caroline, possibly an unreliable narrator, who is a young mother whose husband has taken a job at a Big Tech firm, named Corridor,has its own utopian retreat, Haven. Overall, this is a psychological thriller tinged with sci-fi and horror.
Caroline and her baby Gabriel have followed her workaholic husband, Adam, to his employer’s isolated island company town. This is a future world where most taxis are self driving vehicles, assisted suicide centers have storefront clinics, VR is taken in-stride, and elderly rich people wear bio-jewelry that’s improving their lifestyle. Corridor’s competitors not only also own their own towns, but half of states like north North Dakota.
They meet up with Adam’s co-workers, all working on “you-know-what,” although Caroline is clueless. And then we return to the prologue — 3 month old Gabriel is missing and absolutely everything about his disappearance is sinister. The story did seem imaginative, but it’s such a downer that you wonder if Caroline is living a fever dream. Corridor is supposedly “infrastructure-focused” but what does that mean if they’re covering up her son’s disappearance? I usually can handle dystopian fairy tales, but “Haven” left me uneasy. Almost all the characters are unlikable and my opinion of Caroline kept shifting. This turned out to be a horror story and I was glad I did not need to suffer through another 100 pages. 2.5 stars.
Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): NO But Caroline has impossibly colored grey eyes.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO But in this world it’s possible everything is bio-engineered.
Thank you to Penguin Viking and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy!
Caroline and her baby Gabriel have followed her workaholic husband, Adam, to his employer’s isolated island company town. This is a future world where most taxis are self driving vehicles, assisted suicide centers have storefront clinics, VR is taken in-stride, and elderly rich people wear bio-jewelry that’s improving their lifestyle. Corridor’s competitors not only also own their own towns, but half of states like north North Dakota.
They meet up with Adam’s co-workers, all working on “you-know-what,” although Caroline is clueless. And then we return to the prologue — 3 month old Gabriel is missing and absolutely everything about his disappearance is sinister. The story did seem imaginative, but it’s such a downer that you wonder if Caroline is living a fever dream. Corridor is supposedly “infrastructure-focused” but what does that mean if they’re covering up her son’s disappearance? I usually can handle dystopian fairy tales, but “Haven” left me uneasy. Almost all the characters are unlikable and my opinion of Caroline kept shifting. This turned out to be a horror story and I was glad I did not need to suffer through another 100 pages. 2.5 stars.
Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): NO But Caroline has impossibly colored grey eyes.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO But in this world it’s possible everything is bio-engineered.
Thank you to Penguin Viking and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy!
Read
March 14, 2026How much i want bath my soul and heart
dive to surch what rong
poop to know many lost paper at book of my life
island got my nervs
how i dream by world full by color
island hunt my unsteady life
grey eyes full around
rain truth my sky
dream or imgation i live in
life colored nt my fav
search for truth
for y
dive to surch what rong
poop to know many lost paper at book of my life
island got my nervs
how i dream by world full by color
island hunt my unsteady life
grey eyes full around
rain truth my sky
dream or imgation i live in
life colored nt my fav
search for truth
for y
May 6, 2026
Really twisted. But also a thought-provoking fast read.
April 24, 2026
This was so odd, and I mean i enjoy a surreal horror novel, but i do think there was a little too much left unsaid at the end. I LOVED how the relationship between our MC and her loser husband was written. That element was fantastic.
May 25, 2026
This dystopian sci-fi/tech novel is exactly the kind of book I usually love: paranoia, emotional betrayal, and a protagonist who increasingly distrusts everyone closest to her. Caroline is thrilled when her husband finally lands the kind of job that allows them to live the life she always imagined for herself. Feeling as though she “married up,” she eagerly joins him at the exclusive summer retreat created by his organization, bringing along their baby and settling into what appears to be an idyllic community among their friends.
But from the beginning, something feels slightly off — like a video stuttering or an image glitching at the edges. Unfortunately, I often felt that same way about the writing itself.
I understand that this disorientation is intentional. The novel wants the reader to feel untethered, suspicious, and psychologically destabilized alongside Caroline. But when the final reveal remains so muddy and unresolved, it becomes difficult to know whether my frustration is with the story itself or with the execution.
The entire time I was reading, I felt on the verge of fully enjoying this book. Yet just as the story approached clarity or emotional payoff, it would twist away again. The experience felt less like deliberate ambiguity and more like prolonged narrative withholding.
Ironically, this review probably sounds as unclear as the novel itself, but I am trying to avoid spoilers.
But from the beginning, something feels slightly off — like a video stuttering or an image glitching at the edges. Unfortunately, I often felt that same way about the writing itself.
I understand that this disorientation is intentional. The novel wants the reader to feel untethered, suspicious, and psychologically destabilized alongside Caroline. But when the final reveal remains so muddy and unresolved, it becomes difficult to know whether my frustration is with the story itself or with the execution.
The entire time I was reading, I felt on the verge of fully enjoying this book. Yet just as the story approached clarity or emotional payoff, it would twist away again. The experience felt less like deliberate ambiguity and more like prolonged narrative withholding.
Ironically, this review probably sounds as unclear as the novel itself, but I am trying to avoid spoilers.
March 10, 2026
Super fast-paced intriguing read. I have so many questions about the ending, but that's a sign of a great novel. Wish it were longer and had gotten more of a backstory on all of the characters - otherwise very well-written and exciting/horrifying in equal amounts.
March 18, 2026
Big tech ate my baby
BWAF SINISTER SELECTION
BWAF Score: 7/10
TL;DR: Haven is Rosemary’s Baby rebuilt for the age of NDAs and biohacking, a novel that starts as a missing-child thriller and mutates into something far stranger and more furious. Ani Katz writes early motherhood like a horror movie and corporate complicity like a religion. Ferociously paced, genuinely unnerving, and smart enough to earn its bleakest impulses.
Caroline, sleep-wrecked and anxious, hauls out a breast on a public bench to feed her screaming infant while a group of teenage boys watches and cheers. Her husband Adam is three feet away, face buried in his phone. It’s funny and awful and so precisely observed that it hurt my chest a little. That combination of funny, awful, and precise is the whole book’s operating frequency, and Ani Katz stays locked into it for an impressively long time before cranking the dial toward something much, much worse.
Caroline and Adam, a young Brooklyn couple still shaky from his unemployment and a near-marriage-ending affair, arrive at Haven, an exclusive island community frequented by employees of the tech megacorp where Adam now works. They’re sharing a glass-walled beach house with his colleagues for a month of sun and Sancerre. Caroline has their infant son Gabriel strapped to her body and that prickling feeling that something about this place is fundamentally wrong. Then Adam gets called back to the mainland, and Gabriel disappears.
What Katz does from there is genuinely impressive. She could have written a tight missing-baby thriller. Instead she wrote something that starts as domestic suspense and keeps mutating, pushing through genre membranes until it’s speculative body horror by way of Ira Levin and a decade of tech-bro dystopia discourse. It shouldn’t work. It works really well.
Katz writes in long, controlled sentences that accumulate detail the way anxiety accumulates in the body. Caroline is a photographer, and the book thinks like one. A severed hand burrowing into a heap of jade grapes in a grocery store, and it takes you a beat to realize the hand is Caroline’s own, that Katz is describing dissociation as casually as reaching for fruit. Three teenage girls bobbing up out of a turquoise pool like wraiths, grinning, calling the baby “Gabey,” claiming they’re “just the delivery girls.” A doe and her fawns at the water’s edge, speaking without moving their mouths, delivering the novel’s thesis in the voice of an animal parable. The texture is almost tactile. It has the warm, pressurized density of a fever dream you’re not sure you’ve woken up from.
Katz is a writer, photographer, and teacher from Long Island’s South Shore with a BA from Yale and an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago. Her 2020 debut, A Good Man, was a psychological thriller narrated by a family annihilator that earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. That book was a slow-burn character study told from a monster’s perspective. Haven is structurally bolder, pivoting from realism to surrealism mid-stride, distributing its horror across an entire corporate system rather than one man’s broken psychology. In a Writer’s Digest interview, Katz described a five-year evolution from conventional locked-room thriller to speculative horror, shaped by her own difficult journey to have a child alongside what she called “the seemingly daily examples of venal elites dragging the rest of us into a techno-fascist hellscape.” Both pressures are legible on the page, and they give the novel a rawness that feels earned rather than performed.
The characters work because none are simple. Caroline is sympathetic but not saintly: judgmental, afraid of teenagers on street corners, aware she married up. Adam is infuriating the way charismatic, self-pitying men are infuriating. The supporting cast are drawn with a satirist’s precision. Blaise with his Olympic swimmer’s body and performative man-bun. Wynn delivering conspiracy lectures in a hat embroidered “Unprecedented Times.” Perry, so carefully kind to Caroline that you spend half the book wondering if he’s decent or something else entirely. Katz gives them all just enough humanity that they stay real even as the plot demands they become sinister, and that ambiguity is one of the scariest things in the novel.
The middle section is where Haven is most electrifying and occasionally most unwieldy. Each scene is individually stunning, but stacked together they occasionally slow momentum when you want it sprinting. Maybe fifteen pages where accumulation tips from dreamlike into cluttered. Minor complaint about a ferociously paced book, but it’s there.
The dread in Haven is built through social discomfort that metastasizes. The scariest thing here isn’t a cult or a corporation. It’s the feeling of being in a room full of people who all know something you don’t, who are smiling, who might love you, who are definitely lying. Katz understands that durable horror comes from complicity. It’s Rosemary’s Baby if the Castevets worked in venture capital, but that undersells how contemporary and politically furious this book is.
Haven is not perfect. It’s ambitious in ways that mostly pay off, which is rarer and more interesting. It has the courage to be genuinely weird, the craft to make that weirdness feel inevitable, and a thesis about power, motherhood, and what we’ll sacrifice for safety that will sit in your stomach like a stone. Read it, then lie face-down on the floor for twenty minutes.
BWAF SINISTER SELECTION
BWAF Score: 7/10
TL;DR: Haven is Rosemary’s Baby rebuilt for the age of NDAs and biohacking, a novel that starts as a missing-child thriller and mutates into something far stranger and more furious. Ani Katz writes early motherhood like a horror movie and corporate complicity like a religion. Ferociously paced, genuinely unnerving, and smart enough to earn its bleakest impulses.
Caroline, sleep-wrecked and anxious, hauls out a breast on a public bench to feed her screaming infant while a group of teenage boys watches and cheers. Her husband Adam is three feet away, face buried in his phone. It’s funny and awful and so precisely observed that it hurt my chest a little. That combination of funny, awful, and precise is the whole book’s operating frequency, and Ani Katz stays locked into it for an impressively long time before cranking the dial toward something much, much worse.
Caroline and Adam, a young Brooklyn couple still shaky from his unemployment and a near-marriage-ending affair, arrive at Haven, an exclusive island community frequented by employees of the tech megacorp where Adam now works. They’re sharing a glass-walled beach house with his colleagues for a month of sun and Sancerre. Caroline has their infant son Gabriel strapped to her body and that prickling feeling that something about this place is fundamentally wrong. Then Adam gets called back to the mainland, and Gabriel disappears.
What Katz does from there is genuinely impressive. She could have written a tight missing-baby thriller. Instead she wrote something that starts as domestic suspense and keeps mutating, pushing through genre membranes until it’s speculative body horror by way of Ira Levin and a decade of tech-bro dystopia discourse. It shouldn’t work. It works really well.
Katz writes in long, controlled sentences that accumulate detail the way anxiety accumulates in the body. Caroline is a photographer, and the book thinks like one. A severed hand burrowing into a heap of jade grapes in a grocery store, and it takes you a beat to realize the hand is Caroline’s own, that Katz is describing dissociation as casually as reaching for fruit. Three teenage girls bobbing up out of a turquoise pool like wraiths, grinning, calling the baby “Gabey,” claiming they’re “just the delivery girls.” A doe and her fawns at the water’s edge, speaking without moving their mouths, delivering the novel’s thesis in the voice of an animal parable. The texture is almost tactile. It has the warm, pressurized density of a fever dream you’re not sure you’ve woken up from.
Katz is a writer, photographer, and teacher from Long Island’s South Shore with a BA from Yale and an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago. Her 2020 debut, A Good Man, was a psychological thriller narrated by a family annihilator that earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. That book was a slow-burn character study told from a monster’s perspective. Haven is structurally bolder, pivoting from realism to surrealism mid-stride, distributing its horror across an entire corporate system rather than one man’s broken psychology. In a Writer’s Digest interview, Katz described a five-year evolution from conventional locked-room thriller to speculative horror, shaped by her own difficult journey to have a child alongside what she called “the seemingly daily examples of venal elites dragging the rest of us into a techno-fascist hellscape.” Both pressures are legible on the page, and they give the novel a rawness that feels earned rather than performed.
The characters work because none are simple. Caroline is sympathetic but not saintly: judgmental, afraid of teenagers on street corners, aware she married up. Adam is infuriating the way charismatic, self-pitying men are infuriating. The supporting cast are drawn with a satirist’s precision. Blaise with his Olympic swimmer’s body and performative man-bun. Wynn delivering conspiracy lectures in a hat embroidered “Unprecedented Times.” Perry, so carefully kind to Caroline that you spend half the book wondering if he’s decent or something else entirely. Katz gives them all just enough humanity that they stay real even as the plot demands they become sinister, and that ambiguity is one of the scariest things in the novel.
The middle section is where Haven is most electrifying and occasionally most unwieldy. Each scene is individually stunning, but stacked together they occasionally slow momentum when you want it sprinting. Maybe fifteen pages where accumulation tips from dreamlike into cluttered. Minor complaint about a ferociously paced book, but it’s there.
The dread in Haven is built through social discomfort that metastasizes. The scariest thing here isn’t a cult or a corporation. It’s the feeling of being in a room full of people who all know something you don’t, who are smiling, who might love you, who are definitely lying. Katz understands that durable horror comes from complicity. It’s Rosemary’s Baby if the Castevets worked in venture capital, but that undersells how contemporary and politically furious this book is.
Haven is not perfect. It’s ambitious in ways that mostly pay off, which is rarer and more interesting. It has the courage to be genuinely weird, the craft to make that weirdness feel inevitable, and a thesis about power, motherhood, and what we’ll sacrifice for safety that will sit in your stomach like a stone. Read it, then lie face-down on the floor for twenty minutes.
July 11, 2026
I’ve been simmering on this one for a couple months. I think this book mirrors The Ferryman by Justin Cronin. The key question for both is: What would you give up for a “perfect” life? What actually makes life good?
Unlike The Ferryman, Haven is written from the perspective of an MC who has no choice in the matter. There was no sense of she brought it upon herself, which made it a more poignant story.
I think the three girls are supposed to be the fates? I’m still working through it. Honestly deserves a reread.
Unlike The Ferryman, Haven is written from the perspective of an MC who has no choice in the matter. There was no sense of she brought it upon herself, which made it a more poignant story.
I think the three girls are supposed to be the fates? I’m still working through it. Honestly deserves a reread.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This was just ... bizarre. None of the characters were likeable and Caroline just seemed along for the ride and not really engaged on what was happening around her. It's almost like this story wanted to be so many things but couldn't stick to one idea.
April 23, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of
Haven.
The cover art caught my eye even though I'm not a fan of books with cult themes.
TW: miscarriage, disturbing imagery of blood and animal sacrifice, missing children
Haven is a sci-fi novel that weaves complex themes of A.I., technology, eugenics, and biohacking through the perspective of Caroline, a new mom who is struggling as a new parent.
She is an unreliable main character; at first, I thought the story was a commentary on the challenges of motherhood, which is nothing new.
The story gradually turns into a deeper exploration of social privilege and the moral complexities surrounding those who hold power and think everyone else is beneath them.
There's no one likable here, not Caroline and her engineer husband, Adam, and his tech bro friends and their partners.
There's no substance to anyone, Caroline is a stereotype, a woman who had an artistic career and sacrificed it to support her husband who needed a new job so they could start their family.
Caroline is nothing more than a trope rather than an individual with needs, desires, and ambitions of her own.
The world-building is creepy but inconsistent.
The author attempts to create a surreal atmosphere like a David Lynch movie but the strangeness seems forced, making it difficult for me to really believe what's happening.
There are so many strange things happening and Caroline is still oblivious?
OK, I get her son is missing so she's extremely distracted but once again, the main character has no idea what's happening or remains in denial of the oddities she's encountered; the people, the strange comments directed at her.
There's no tension or suspense until Caroline's son has disappeared.
Since the novel is so short, she spends half the narrative looking for him and the real reason they're on this island.
Nothing really happens except for those fever memories Caroline suddenly, conveniently recalls when the moment calls for them, all is explained in a undramatic info dump that detracts from the buildup.
While the narrative has potential, the execution falls flat in character development and world-building.
The story hints at important themes but doesn't explore them deeply enough and the anti-climatic ending is another cliche; dull acceptance because who is going to fight an all powerful tech company?
I'm left wondering - what's the point of the story?
The cover art caught my eye even though I'm not a fan of books with cult themes.
TW: miscarriage, disturbing imagery of blood and animal sacrifice, missing children
Haven is a sci-fi novel that weaves complex themes of A.I., technology, eugenics, and biohacking through the perspective of Caroline, a new mom who is struggling as a new parent.
She is an unreliable main character; at first, I thought the story was a commentary on the challenges of motherhood, which is nothing new.
The story gradually turns into a deeper exploration of social privilege and the moral complexities surrounding those who hold power and think everyone else is beneath them.
There's no one likable here, not Caroline and her engineer husband, Adam, and his tech bro friends and their partners.
There's no substance to anyone, Caroline is a stereotype, a woman who had an artistic career and sacrificed it to support her husband who needed a new job so they could start their family.
Caroline is nothing more than a trope rather than an individual with needs, desires, and ambitions of her own.
The world-building is creepy but inconsistent.
The author attempts to create a surreal atmosphere like a David Lynch movie but the strangeness seems forced, making it difficult for me to really believe what's happening.
There are so many strange things happening and Caroline is still oblivious?
OK, I get her son is missing so she's extremely distracted but once again, the main character has no idea what's happening or remains in denial of the oddities she's encountered; the people, the strange comments directed at her.
There's no tension or suspense until Caroline's son has disappeared.
Since the novel is so short, she spends half the narrative looking for him and the real reason they're on this island.
Nothing really happens except for those fever memories Caroline suddenly, conveniently recalls when the moment calls for them, all is explained in a undramatic info dump that detracts from the buildup.
While the narrative has potential, the execution falls flat in character development and world-building.
The story hints at important themes but doesn't explore them deeply enough and the anti-climatic ending is another cliche; dull acceptance because who is going to fight an all powerful tech company?
I'm left wondering - what's the point of the story?
April 21, 2026
hmm..... thanks to netgalley & the publisher for letting me read this in exchange for my honest review.
A speculative type of fictional story that focuses on the relationships of strangers, motherhood, traditions, the lengths people go for longevity of life & technology’s relationships with our future.
Caroline is a relatively new mom, she’s been doing the heavy lifting in the couple when it comes to taking care of her son Gabriel since her husband Adam got his job at big tech company Corridor. Despite the company being a major pillar of society, all of his work is shadowed in the elusiveness of NDA’s that keep Adam from actually telling Caroline what he does. He convinces her to go on a trip to Haven, an island that was once a mystery of traditions but is now a big tech vacation spot. They’re grouped up with Adam’s friends & colleagues, a group that Caroline isn’t super close with but has met. Once they’re on the island, things start to become a little more than anyone signed up for.
When I read the description of this book I thought I would be in for a treat that would combine the average horrors mothers have in new places with a little baby & the way big tech has its hands on everything around us. Unfortunately, the story could not live up to that hype. Almost immediately Adam proved himself to be a fucking dick, telling his wife he ‘love[s] it when you’re a little bitchy’ & that nearly sent me, I mean this was the first chapter!!!
Poor Caroline is trying to enjoy some semblance of a vacation & instead she’s trapped on an island surrounded by adults who are mixing their substances & a whole island population making weird allusions she simply can’t keep up with. In the first few chapters we’re treated to an absent father, a group of late 20-somethings doing droppers of some synthetic drug & lots of partner swapping. I’m not opposed to any of these things mind you, I love a fucked up tale. But unfortunately, this was not good. Throughout the story we’re treated to glimpses of Caroline’s true self, spotting photographs she would be taking & how she would tell those stories but the reality of life is too much to ignore. When her husband breaks the news that he’s not going to be with the group during the week because of “work”, she’s left with even more to pay attention to but luckily some of the friends are sympathetic trying to assist in their own type of ways. When Gabriel goes missing, I was almost glad of it at least something was moving along but that joy was a short lived creature. We’re led to believe that this is a huge plot point of the story, with Caroline slowly but surely losing all traces of her sanity while she’s being gaslit by nearly every person around her. Then finally, when the answers arrived it negated any of her growth & made for a lackluster story in all.
By the last 20% of the book I just wanted to be done, I wanted her to either find her son or not but I needed her to get to that conclusion. Since I’ve already DNF’d a few books this year I stuck through & felt confident enough to write some kind of review on it. I think the idea is there but, unfortunately it fell off pretty hard.
A speculative type of fictional story that focuses on the relationships of strangers, motherhood, traditions, the lengths people go for longevity of life & technology’s relationships with our future.
Caroline is a relatively new mom, she’s been doing the heavy lifting in the couple when it comes to taking care of her son Gabriel since her husband Adam got his job at big tech company Corridor. Despite the company being a major pillar of society, all of his work is shadowed in the elusiveness of NDA’s that keep Adam from actually telling Caroline what he does. He convinces her to go on a trip to Haven, an island that was once a mystery of traditions but is now a big tech vacation spot. They’re grouped up with Adam’s friends & colleagues, a group that Caroline isn’t super close with but has met. Once they’re on the island, things start to become a little more than anyone signed up for.
When I read the description of this book I thought I would be in for a treat that would combine the average horrors mothers have in new places with a little baby & the way big tech has its hands on everything around us. Unfortunately, the story could not live up to that hype. Almost immediately Adam proved himself to be a fucking dick, telling his wife he ‘love[s] it when you’re a little bitchy’ & that nearly sent me, I mean this was the first chapter!!!
Poor Caroline is trying to enjoy some semblance of a vacation & instead she’s trapped on an island surrounded by adults who are mixing their substances & a whole island population making weird allusions she simply can’t keep up with. In the first few chapters we’re treated to an absent father, a group of late 20-somethings doing droppers of some synthetic drug & lots of partner swapping. I’m not opposed to any of these things mind you, I love a fucked up tale. But unfortunately, this was not good. Throughout the story we’re treated to glimpses of Caroline’s true self, spotting photographs she would be taking & how she would tell those stories but the reality of life is too much to ignore. When her husband breaks the news that he’s not going to be with the group during the week because of “work”, she’s left with even more to pay attention to but luckily some of the friends are sympathetic trying to assist in their own type of ways. When Gabriel goes missing, I was almost glad of it at least something was moving along but that joy was a short lived creature. We’re led to believe that this is a huge plot point of the story, with Caroline slowly but surely losing all traces of her sanity while she’s being gaslit by nearly every person around her. Then finally, when the answers arrived it negated any of her growth & made for a lackluster story in all.
By the last 20% of the book I just wanted to be done, I wanted her to either find her son or not but I needed her to get to that conclusion. Since I’ve already DNF’d a few books this year I stuck through & felt confident enough to write some kind of review on it. I think the idea is there but, unfortunately it fell off pretty hard.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Oh no, I really didn't like this book.
Nothing really happens for more than the first half of the book. By the time the baby finally went missing and there was a hint of excitement to come, I was pretty much over it and didn't care much about whether or not they found Gabriel. Even the "thrilling" bits missed the mark for me, leaving me feeling like calling Haven a thriller is a bit of a stretch.
Upon discovering the baby is missing, Caroline and the other grownass adults in this book immediately decide his abduction is all a part of a conspiracy and then run around the island like the gang from Scooby Doo trying to solve a mystery. It was... weird.
I didn't like or care about any of the characters. With the exception of Caroline and one other character, all of the people she was staying with blurred together. There were too many of them.
There was one scene where many of them share a past trauma that should have humanized them in a way that made me care, but it didn't work. None of them were especially likeable or unlikeable - they just existed.
The book takes place in the near future and there was a vague sci-fi element that felt only partially formed and a lot of it was bogged down by too many company names and phrases. It's possible we are meant to be as confused about the tech world Caroline's husband and friends are a part of as she is, but if that's true, I don't like the way it was done.
I don't know, I always try to say something positive about a book when I didn't absolutely hate it, but I feel like this book is just... there. It's a book! There are some bits about motherhood I am sure some parents could relate to, but I don't know if that small part makes it worth the read.
I'm looking forward to reading positive reviews of this book though because maybe they can shed some light on something I missed.
I received an ARC from Viking Books.
Nothing really happens for more than the first half of the book. By the time the baby finally went missing and there was a hint of excitement to come, I was pretty much over it and didn't care much about whether or not they found Gabriel. Even the "thrilling" bits missed the mark for me, leaving me feeling like calling Haven a thriller is a bit of a stretch.
Upon discovering the baby is missing, Caroline and the other grownass adults in this book immediately decide his abduction is all a part of a conspiracy and then run around the island like the gang from Scooby Doo trying to solve a mystery. It was... weird.
I didn't like or care about any of the characters. With the exception of Caroline and one other character, all of the people she was staying with blurred together. There were too many of them.
There was one scene where many of them share a past trauma that should have humanized them in a way that made me care, but it didn't work. None of them were especially likeable or unlikeable - they just existed.
The book takes place in the near future and there was a vague sci-fi element that felt only partially formed and a lot of it was bogged down by too many company names and phrases. It's possible we are meant to be as confused about the tech world Caroline's husband and friends are a part of as she is, but if that's true, I don't like the way it was done.
I don't know, I always try to say something positive about a book when I didn't absolutely hate it, but I feel like this book is just... there. It's a book! There are some bits about motherhood I am sure some parents could relate to, but I don't know if that small part makes it worth the read.
I'm looking forward to reading positive reviews of this book though because maybe they can shed some light on something I missed.
I received an ARC from Viking Books.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you to NetGalley, author Ani Katz, and Viking Penguin for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!
2.5 rounded up? I think? Oof, this one was really heavy. I'm all about weird books, but this might have been a step too far for me. This will not be for everyone; I would definitely check some reviews and maybe content flags before reading. However, I will say, this book has EXCELLENT pacing. Katz drew me in immediately to the story and world-building. Once the book hit the halfway point, this is where things really started picking up speed, and it literally felt like a car crash I couldn't look away from. This is set in a near-future, and while I do wish some aspects of the time period were better fleshed out, the sense of not-knowing almost made it eerier. The setting of Haven is unsettling, and even from the start, there was a pulsing discomfort throughout each of the characters. There are some shocking conversations and scenes peppered throughout, and I do wish we got more of a sense of who these people (besides from Caroline) actually are. I liked Caroline as a protagonist, her flaws and all. The reveal at the end was pretty shocking to me, and although I was confused in certain ways at first, I think it did straighten out by the closing. This was a book that left me feeling unsettled and grim, which is not my preferred when reading a book. In ways, I think the tone and quite frankly violence of this near future book reminded me in ways of The Compound by Aisling Rawle last year. That book didn't quite work for me, and I do think I enjoyed this read more, but I feel like if you're fans of one, I would recommend the other to at least try.
2.5 rounded up? I think? Oof, this one was really heavy. I'm all about weird books, but this might have been a step too far for me. This will not be for everyone; I would definitely check some reviews and maybe content flags before reading. However, I will say, this book has EXCELLENT pacing. Katz drew me in immediately to the story and world-building. Once the book hit the halfway point, this is where things really started picking up speed, and it literally felt like a car crash I couldn't look away from. This is set in a near-future, and while I do wish some aspects of the time period were better fleshed out, the sense of not-knowing almost made it eerier. The setting of Haven is unsettling, and even from the start, there was a pulsing discomfort throughout each of the characters. There are some shocking conversations and scenes peppered throughout, and I do wish we got more of a sense of who these people (besides from Caroline) actually are. I liked Caroline as a protagonist, her flaws and all. The reveal at the end was pretty shocking to me, and although I was confused in certain ways at first, I think it did straighten out by the closing. This was a book that left me feeling unsettled and grim, which is not my preferred when reading a book. In ways, I think the tone and quite frankly violence of this near future book reminded me in ways of The Compound by Aisling Rawle last year. That book didn't quite work for me, and I do think I enjoyed this read more, but I feel like if you're fans of one, I would recommend the other to at least try.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions!
I had to sleep on this one before I could review it or even decide on a rating. I'm going with 3.5 stars rounded up.
The first part of this book reads like a mom suffering from postpartum psychosis, with a touch of drinking while taking what I assumed to be benzos. The second half is an abrupt shift into a mystery novel while Caroline tries to find out what's happened to her son.
Both halves are weird. This may actually be the most unreliable narrator I have ever encountered, and nothing is explained. Bizarre things happen and are breezed past, the tertiary characters behave insanely, technology is introduced with no real understanding of what it does.
To be clear: I love unreliable narrators. That instantly makes any book more intriguing for me. My main reason for rating this book 3.5 stars is because the two halves of the book are so disparate. It's like someone stitched two different stories together and the abrupt change of pace is jarring. I found it odd how some of the themes so heavily portrayed in the first half are completely abandoned in the second half. And even though the ending does pan out, it's still just a little bit under explained. I think I understand what I read? But I wouldn't want to try to write an English essay about it!
Overall worth reading if you're like me and into weird books with unreliable narrators. It definitely got into my head a few times despite being so short.
I had to sleep on this one before I could review it or even decide on a rating. I'm going with 3.5 stars rounded up.
The first part of this book reads like a mom suffering from postpartum psychosis, with a touch of drinking while taking what I assumed to be benzos. The second half is an abrupt shift into a mystery novel while Caroline tries to find out what's happened to her son.
Both halves are weird. This may actually be the most unreliable narrator I have ever encountered, and nothing is explained. Bizarre things happen and are breezed past, the tertiary characters behave insanely, technology is introduced with no real understanding of what it does.
To be clear: I love unreliable narrators. That instantly makes any book more intriguing for me. My main reason for rating this book 3.5 stars is because the two halves of the book are so disparate. It's like someone stitched two different stories together and the abrupt change of pace is jarring. I found it odd how some of the themes so heavily portrayed in the first half are completely abandoned in the second half. And even though the ending does pan out, it's still just a little bit under explained. I think I understand what I read? But I wouldn't want to try to write an English essay about it!
Overall worth reading if you're like me and into weird books with unreliable narrators. It definitely got into my head a few times despite being so short.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
3.75 / 5 stars -
Thank you Netgalley and Ani Katz for the advanced copy! If you know me, you know I'm all for weird, eccentric novels (It's by far my favorite genre).
For 40% of the book, I had no clue what was going on - other than our main character, Caroline, and her husband decide to go on a mini retreat to Haven for their summer holidays. Towards the first half of the novel, we get backstory on the start of their marriage, Adam's job at Corridor (rather vaguely), then their time at Haven with Adam's friends. The main bit of knowledge I've retained from this part of the book is that their version of monogamy is different from mine, and all of Adam's friends are strange.
The plot begins to pick up at the 52% mark where a series of unfortunate events unfold - Caroline bringing her baby to a yacht, giving said baby to a group of young girls, proceeding to makeout with Adam's friend, and forgetting everything that occurred that evening. At this point, Adam is temporarily away due to work-related reasons. Unfortunately, Caroline is gaslighted by the police and we start to feel the unease of this cultish island, Haven.
Without spoiling much of this story, Adam reveals significant information about his work that illuminates why their baby could be gone. Am I shocked here? Not really. It felt like it came out of a Black Mirror episode, in a good way. I'm here for a futuristic plot that edges on the border of fantasy and reality.
I'll end with this note - I knew something was shifty with her husband, it's just not what I thought it was originally lol.
Thank you Netgalley and Ani Katz for the advanced copy! If you know me, you know I'm all for weird, eccentric novels (It's by far my favorite genre).
For 40% of the book, I had no clue what was going on - other than our main character, Caroline, and her husband decide to go on a mini retreat to Haven for their summer holidays. Towards the first half of the novel, we get backstory on the start of their marriage, Adam's job at Corridor (rather vaguely), then their time at Haven with Adam's friends. The main bit of knowledge I've retained from this part of the book is that their version of monogamy is different from mine, and all of Adam's friends are strange.
The plot begins to pick up at the 52% mark where a series of unfortunate events unfold - Caroline bringing her baby to a yacht, giving said baby to a group of young girls, proceeding to makeout with Adam's friend, and forgetting everything that occurred that evening. At this point, Adam is temporarily away due to work-related reasons. Unfortunately, Caroline is gaslighted by the police and we start to feel the unease of this cultish island, Haven.
Without spoiling much of this story, Adam reveals significant information about his work that illuminates why their baby could be gone. Am I shocked here? Not really. It felt like it came out of a Black Mirror episode, in a good way. I'm here for a futuristic plot that edges on the border of fantasy and reality.
I'll end with this note - I knew something was shifty with her husband, it's just not what I thought it was originally lol.
May 8, 2026
Thank you to Viking Penguin and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Sigh. I was sadly disappointed by this one! I don't know if part of it was I had such excited expectations by the blurb and the cool cover, but I just felt like this story did not hit. Every single character is dislikeable (some people love this and I'm saying this as a caveat to my somewhat negative review, that I personally do not like for every single character to be terrible people). I found the book lacking in setting the stage and it was confusing as a result. Like I read the blurb to mean there would be weird cultish behavior, but honestly nothing the island people did seemed THAT weird? I would call it "world building" but it's a real world I guess, it's more of a sci-fi situation, similar to The Compound, but I felt like by the time I figured out what was going on (the end) I just didn't care anymore because I was not invested in any of the characters (except of course for the poor baby). Everyone in this book is terrible and lacking in any sort of morals. Which CAN be fun if done in a more whimsical/satirical way I feel, but really I just found the whole story to be off-putting (and not in a fun horror way, just kind of like "why am I reading this?" way). I feel so bad because I really really wanted to love this one but I just couldn't connect to it in any way. Glad I tried it, but if I wasn't reviewing for NG, I might have DNFd.
Sigh. I was sadly disappointed by this one! I don't know if part of it was I had such excited expectations by the blurb and the cool cover, but I just felt like this story did not hit. Every single character is dislikeable (some people love this and I'm saying this as a caveat to my somewhat negative review, that I personally do not like for every single character to be terrible people). I found the book lacking in setting the stage and it was confusing as a result. Like I read the blurb to mean there would be weird cultish behavior, but honestly nothing the island people did seemed THAT weird? I would call it "world building" but it's a real world I guess, it's more of a sci-fi situation, similar to The Compound, but I felt like by the time I figured out what was going on (the end) I just didn't care anymore because I was not invested in any of the characters (except of course for the poor baby). Everyone in this book is terrible and lacking in any sort of morals. Which CAN be fun if done in a more whimsical/satirical way I feel, but really I just found the whole story to be off-putting (and not in a fun horror way, just kind of like "why am I reading this?" way). I feel so bad because I really really wanted to love this one but I just couldn't connect to it in any way. Glad I tried it, but if I wasn't reviewing for NG, I might have DNFd.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher, for which I thank them.
“Haven” is by Any Katz. For me, this book was a difficult one to get into. I felt like the atmosphere/culture was so over the top (think frat house combined with money) that it almost seemed like a parody of the “tech bro” culture. I couldn’t ever really understand Caroline - was she really passive, did she just not care, was she unreliable, was she losing it? The other characters all seemed to blur together for me - from the people in the house to the people on the beach - and it was difficult for me to keep track of who was doing what (I’m not sure I ever figured out a “why”). This book has science fiction elements yet was set in the near future and while things were off and odd, it became a bit too bewildering (maybe that was the point?). For me, this book didn’t work - the locals weren’t as “odd” as I imagined … nothing weird seem to happen (abstract, yes, weird, not really). Also, the first chapter, where Caroline discovers her son missing, was well done - it was gripping, but then the book took its sweet time getting back to that point, which put me off - yet at the same time, the ending felt super rushed … so pacing was a huge issue for me. Would I recommend this book - maybe, if you like abstract stories mixed with unreliable narrators.
“Haven” is by Any Katz. For me, this book was a difficult one to get into. I felt like the atmosphere/culture was so over the top (think frat house combined with money) that it almost seemed like a parody of the “tech bro” culture. I couldn’t ever really understand Caroline - was she really passive, did she just not care, was she unreliable, was she losing it? The other characters all seemed to blur together for me - from the people in the house to the people on the beach - and it was difficult for me to keep track of who was doing what (I’m not sure I ever figured out a “why”). This book has science fiction elements yet was set in the near future and while things were off and odd, it became a bit too bewildering (maybe that was the point?). For me, this book didn’t work - the locals weren’t as “odd” as I imagined … nothing weird seem to happen (abstract, yes, weird, not really). Also, the first chapter, where Caroline discovers her son missing, was well done - it was gripping, but then the book took its sweet time getting back to that point, which put me off - yet at the same time, the ending felt super rushed … so pacing was a huge issue for me. Would I recommend this book - maybe, if you like abstract stories mixed with unreliable narrators.
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