Clara and her brother, Teddy, grew up on a small island in Maine in the shadow of their parents' tragic deaths, haunted by rumors and paparazzi. Fourteen years later, they've mostly put their turbulent past to rest. Teddy has married Clara's best friend, Jess, and the three of them have moved back home to take over the sprawling, remote family mansion known as Vantage Point. Then Teddy decides to run for the Senate—an unnerving prospect made much worse when intimate videos of Clara are leaked online. The most frightening part is that she doesn't remember filming any of them. Are the videos real? Or are they deepfakes? Is someone trying to take down the Wielands once and for all? Everyone thinks Clara is losing her grasp on reality. But she knows the truth: the videos are only the beginning. Years ago, the curse destroyed her parents. Now, it's coming for her.
Sligar studs her writing with brutally effective imagery of her own invention ... Does knowing the literary ancestry of Vantage Point puncture its illusions? It might explain why the story’s dynamics, particularly as they relate to gender and power, occasionally feel musty. Weighing the novel’s bigger message about inheritance and fate, it’s a curious choice for an author to reconstitute centuries-old characters and consign them to the same narrative arcs generations apart.
