Alex, the glum protagonist of Julia Bartz's subversive debut, The Writing Retreat, has recently crossed into her 30s. Stuck in long-term writer's block, her dreams of making it as a novelist are just about dead; she holds a thankless and "bleakly underpaid" position in publishing; her sex life is equally bleak; and she still mourns her traumatic friend-breakup with the more successful Wren a year ago. So it feels like a shocking and undeserved honor to be accepted to a fantastically exclusive writing retreat hosted by Roza Vallo, the wildly successful novelist Alex has idolized since she was 12 years old. The catch is that Wren has been accepted, too.
Roza's Blackbriar Estate in the Adirondacks in New York is grand, dramatic and supposedly haunted. Roza herself is famous, rather controversial and private: the five young women attending the retreat must sign NDAs. Alex's adoration of her enigmatic hero is enormous, but she is also nearly crippled by anxiety about being near Wren. The five writers in attendance must each complete a whole novel in just 28 days, and the best of their works will win a million-dollar advance on a publishing deal. Even as the high-speed writing race ramps up and the drama with Wren continues to smolder, it emerges that something still more sinister is going on behind the scenes at Blackbriar Estate. Inexorably, The Writing Retreat evolves into an entertaining yet satirical locked-room mystery, as eight women--five young writers, two staff and Roza--find themselves snowed in at Blackbriar and beset by potentially fatal threats that may be supernatural or simply human evil. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia