The Invited by Jennifer McMahon is a story told in multiple points of view and timelines (as are most of her recent novels.) In the current timeline, Nate and Helen are cityfolk who move out to rural Vermont with hopes of living a more simple life. Helen originally wants to move into an old home with a rich history, but it soon proves to be more cost effective for them to purchase land and build on their own. Excited to take on the task of building their home with their own hands, the couple buys a cheaper plot on land that is, according to local legend, haunted by the ghost of a woman accused of being a witch. (The witch business is the plotline for the older timeline in the story.) Fascinated by the legacy of her land, Helen begins collecting antiques and relics of the woman who was hanged and begins incorporating them into the building of her home.
While this is going on, teenaged Olive and her dad are struggling to cope with her mother abandoning them. Her father is continually working to renovate their home in hopes that his wife will return, find it satisfactory, and stay with them. Not only is having her home in a constant state of disarray and renovation taking it’s toll on Olive, but her mother’s disappearance is a main topic of town gossip — specifically that she ran off to have an affair.
When Helen catches Olive on her property, an unlikely bond is formed between them and as they continue to dig into both the legends of Helen’s property and the disappearance of Olive’s mom, things begin to surface that make it evident that things are not as simple or benign as they might seem.
Between the mysteriousness that threads its way through each story line, the small town dynamics amongst the characters in a rural New England town, and a healthy dash of occult, The Invited is everything a reader has come to expect in a Jennifer McMahon novel. It’s a story that has enough intrigue to keep the reader turning pages and enough twists that it’s not always easy to see the end coming. In general, I’d recommend Jennifer McMahon to anyone looking for a relatively quick mystery/thriller.
All that being said, this it the third Jennifer McMahon book I’ve read in the last year or so and I’ve got to say, of the three, it’s probably my least favorite. I would say that The Winter People has more interesting characters and The Drowning Kind –the most recent of McMahon’s novels– has a more dynamic and intriguing plot. This certainly isn’t to say that The Invited was bad, by any means. It was yet another example of McMahon’s writing, which is pretty solid all around, and it’s worth a read. But if someone were to ask me to which McMahon novel they should read, this isn’t the one I’d recommend first.
Despite this one not being my favorite though, I will continue to check out McMahon’s novels as they come out. I think that, in the mystery/thriller genre, she’s one to watch out for.
