- ASIN: B0F6W5P5H3
- Publisher: Muse Literary Publishing
- Publication date: 24 Jun. 2025
- Language: English
- Print length: 313 pages
- Genre: Literary, Psychological Horror Novels
The BookViral Review:
Diane Corso’s Broken Things is a haunting and emotionally charged novel that blurs the lines between psychological suspense, supernatural horror, and a deeply intimate portrait of grief. At once raw and immersive, the book takes readers into the fractured interior world of Maggie Oliver, a woman grappling with unimaginable loss and the shadows that grief can summon.
Three years after a devastating car accident that claimed the lives of her husband and young son, Maggie retreats to a cabin in the Sierra Nevadas. Her intent is to find solitude, perhaps to write again, but more truthfully, to retreat from a world that no longer feels livable. What she finds, however, is not peace. Corso deftly infuses the natural isolation of Maggie’s mountain setting with unease—time slips, recurring dreams, spectral presences, and a growing sense that Maggie’s memories may hold more than sorrow.
The novel’s supernatural current flows most powerfully through Shadowclaw, the unfinished video game Maggie’s late husband designed. When she introduces it to Mina, the imaginative daughter of her neighbor Zach, the game becomes more than a digital artifact; it is a gateway to unsettling truths. The mechanics of Shadowclaw—half puzzle, half oracle—act as both metaphor and catalyst, revealing long-buried family secrets, including the mysterious disappearance of Maggie’s mother-in-law. This clever device anchors the novel’s ghost story elements, situating them as extensions of memory, trauma, and the liminal space between the living and the dead.
Corso’s greatest strength lies in her character work. Maggie is rendered with painful honesty, her inner monologue sharp with wit, self-awareness, and despair. Readers are not asked to pity her but to sit uncomfortably with her rawness, her detachment, and her tentative steps toward connection. Zach and Mina serve as fragile threads of human warmth, their presence grounding Maggie even as they draw her deeper into the supernatural storm. Mina, in particular, shines as a character whose innocence and imagination cut through the novel’s darkness, reminding both Maggie and the reader of what resilience looks like in its purest form.
Thematically, Broken Things wrestles with memory, grief, and the nature of haunting. The “In-Between”—a shadowy realm where lost souls linger—becomes an unsettling manifestation of Maggie’s psyche. Here, she encounters not only echoes of her family but also malevolent forces intent on consuming her. Yet Corso avoids falling into genre cliché. Instead, she positions haunting as both external threat and internal reckoning. Maggie must decide whether to remain lost in memory or to summon the courage to rejoin the living.
Stylistically, the novel balances intimacy with atmosphere. Corso’s prose is vivid yet unpretentious, evoking the eerie quiet of the mountains as effectively as the surreal landscapes of Maggie’s fugue states. The pacing is deliberate, giving room for the narrative’s psychological layers to unfurl, though never so slow as to lose tension. Readers who appreciate Shirley Jackson’s psychological gothic or Jennifer McMahon’s supernatural thrillers will find familiar pleasures here.
Broken Things is not simply a ghost story. It is a meditation on survival—how trauma fractures identity, how memory both imprisons and redeems, and how love persists in places we least expect. Corso’s novel lingers long after the final page, not just for its spectral imagery but for its empathy.
Our Verdict: A chilling exploration of grief and resilience, Broken Things is a must read for fans of literary horror and psychological suspense.
It is highly recommended.
