Sydney comes home one night expecting to have a quiet night to herself while her boyfriend and son are away camping. Instead she walks into a stranger who has broken into her home who hit her on the head with a candle knocking her unconscious. The home invasion is just the beginning of the horrors to come as we delve into her dark past, and her present life, as it unravels around her.

This was such an interesting read. My favorite part hands down was Sydney. Her character was written in such a fantastic way, and I really felt like I knew her.
Overall it was a good story but I found that there were a lot of descriptive paragraphs. After a while they got tedious. Great read!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Red Hook Books for this ARC in exchange for my own opinion.

Ok I really enjoyed this book. Its about a recovering addict, Sydney, 9 years clean, has a son Danny and a boyfriend Matty. As an addict myself, I thought that the author did a pretty good job of portraying an addict, and I will tell you why in a minute. Without giving too much away, Sydney has built a pretty stable life for herself. But one day as she answers her door, an intruder bursts his way in. Sydney wakes up in the hospital and as the detectives arrive, as in any crime, asking questions, Sydney tells her account of what's happened. She fought off her intruder, narrowly escaping to her neighbors and that's quite about it. But, that's not it, is it, as the intruder is lying dead in her house and killed in such a way that it seems personal.

Sydney, of course being a recovering addict, is not believed. What really happened? As I said I'm an addict and have been treated by the police, some family members and various people throughout my life as one. Is Sydney telling the truth? Can an addict be believed? And will she relapse because she can't remember and the old urges and demons are calling? This book is sad, and its kind of left open ended to what you think happened but not in a bad way. It is sad, and I'm very grateful to author Andy Marino for treating addiction as it, a disease. The characters were betrayed perfectly and I really, really liked this book. The person in me and especially the addict in me.

4.5 stars! One point I'd like to make, I wouldn't label this book a horror., as it is touted as one.

Sort of a sci-fi/horror story about a woman that interrupts a home invasion and ends up killing the intruder but has no memory of the incident. The story become convoluted shortly after that and I struggled to follow the meandering plotline.

The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess is a great new horror book about a person in recovery who is attacked in a home invasion. I found the characters strong and believable. The way the author deals with relapse is fairly spot-on. The running self-sabotaging dialogue in Sydney's head was very familiar to me. The plot is really interesting and while I did not find it really scary, I did find it pretty gruesome at times. Although the story was solid, it left me with a lot of "why" questions afterward. There is not much I can share without ruining the story for others. It really stuck with me and I found myself thinking about it days after I was done. It is definitely worth a read.

I am giving this three stars because it did a fantastic job of hooking me enough to want to get half-way through. However, I kind of wish I would have just given it up at that point.

I have no idea what I just read… and sometimes, that can be fun or artsy and cool. But I honestly just did not like the second half of the book at all.

I have NO idea what the visitations are or to what they actually referring. The title makes no sense.

The description of the book makes it sound like Sydney is possessed, but that is not correct either. I don’t even know what it is that happens because that information isn’t really given to the reader, and the ending gives no sort of explanation at all.

This is more about drug addiction than it is anything else. The back and forth of timelines was confusing. The whole thing is just… wacky and weird. Kind of like a fever dream… a drug induced fever dream.

This was quite a debut! Thriller+horror+supernatural =sometimes confusing but all the time fun!
Sydney’s home was broken into and somehow the man whodunnit is dead? Sydney has no memory at all of the man’s demise and she has been told it was her who killed him. Now this is where it becomes even stranger and I don’t want to give too much away, so stay with this one til the end!

Sydney Burgess, mother, partner, nine years sober, is attacked when she walks in on a burglary. When she learns later on that she attacked the burglar without any memory of it, she starts second guessing herself and everyone around her.

I was gripped by this story immediately. Sydney is likeable and well fleshed out. However, once she descends into madness, I couldn't understand what was going on anymore.

I know this is labeled as horror, but it felt more like an acid trip gone wrong. There is talk about swimmers throughout, but we never actually know what they are. Bits of the story seem to be missing. Perhaps that was on purpose, but it didn't work for me. The jumps between now and then made it even harder to understand.

There is no satisfying ending that helps explain any of it. In fact, I'm still wondering what the 'visitations' from the title refer to. Not a win for me, unfortunately.

Well, this is dark.

Seriously, every chapter just goes darker and darker. If you want even a sliver of light in the bleakness, this probably isn’t your book.

It’s also well written and has a plot that’s extremely unique. When the reason behind everything was finally revealed, I can honestly say that I didn’t see it coming. I’ll also admit hat I struggled to wrap my head around it at first – but I eventually bought into it.

I think that you need to be in the right mood for this one. It’s grim and sad and slightly frenetic.

I’ll be honest and tell you that I likely won’t reread it. I usually want a bit more fun and lightness in my reading. But I am glad I read it.

*ARC via Net Galley

I was so intrigued for the first two visitations. I thought the writing was so well done, especially in the portion, because it would be her in current time and then she's remembering something and then she will snap out of it and be back in current time. And I was right there with her, not really realizing we were in the past until the sudden jump to current time. I really wish there was more explanation of what the swimmer is. I spent probably half of the book being way too confused. I liked the characters.

I saw this title making the rounds on Twitter and I was so intrigued. The cover is stellar, and I am a sucker for possession stories. After a string of existential reads, I was looking for something a little meatier and I was thrilled be approved.

Sydney Burgess is a recovering addict trying to do the best for her son. After she's attacked in her home by a masked intruder, however, things turn sideways. She remembers the events one way, but the police tell her an entirely different story. As the memories return, Sydney questions whether her memory loss can be explained by the trauma or something more nefarious.

I liked this book.

To start, the voice is really well done. I loved the exploration of recovery and Sydney's past. Marino does a good job of establishing an authentic character, layered and flawed, that is endearing to the reader without being overly sympathetic or antagonistic. The first few chapters were gripping and bloody and extremely cinematic, and I could definitely see this playing out well on the screen.

I was not expecting a sci-fi angle, so in terms of visitations or possessions, there might be some dissonance with how the series of events plays out. The experimental structure was hit or miss, with some chapters being super successful and others feeling a bit forced/out of order. I didn't mind the time jumps, but as the present timeline unfolds, I found some of the flashbacks unnecessary to character development or plot propulsion.

Overall, The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess is a bloody, troubling read that examines the grittier side of addiction and trauma, but might not be the supernatural possession narrative you expect. Still a solid read and look forward to more from Marino.

Thank you to Redhook and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.

My thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for the arc to review. Unfortunately I could barely get passed 20% of the book and had to force myself to read. I did not finish and this is a partial review.

Sydney Burgess was attacked in her home, her attacker dead, and she was in a Psych hospital being question by the police. I was very confused with reading the story and the writing style. Book classified as horror, but I was getting psychological thriller at one point, and a memoir the life of an addict in another perspective. I don't know what I was reading. Not a good flow. Sydney loves her son and tries, but got very lost . Can't recommend.

This was suuuuuper weird, but I liked it. It starts off with Sydney coming home and interrupting a burglar, who attacks her. In the hospital, she remembers getting away but she has no memory of killing and mutilating the burglar. Things start getting really weird for Sydney after that, and relapse into prior addiction gets closer and closer. At first, it's hard to tell if it's her mental health falling apart or something even darker. It definitely went places I was not expecting, Sydney was a great character, and I really liked the writing. It's listed as horror but felt more sci-fi to me. 3.5 rounded to 4.

This book won't be for everyone. A lot of people will find it confusing. Some stories are made to just not follow a plot or completely make sense, but you can still enjoy them( if you like books like that ) I personally love unreliable narrator tales that feel like fevere dreams. This book also delves into addiction and it's horror perfectly. I am going to recommend this one to horror lovers that I know.

This was a well written but strange book and i am wondering what was the point. It started out good, but soon it got confusing with different timelines, an unreliable narrator, a drug induced? madness and violence. It ended up losing me ,as to what the point was

This is a hard one to rate. Started out great…took an interesting twist. Then got weirder and weirder…not at all what I was expecting. My expectations perhaps wrongly affected my enjoyment. The body horror was…horrific. I can acknowledge that this was well done and some are going to love it…just not me.

This was a strange descent into insanity. I was very intrigued until about 50% then it just got a little overwhelming with Sydney’s declining mental state.

I read a lot of reviews that disliked how the timeline jumps around, but I loved it. I felt like the time jumps and skips enhanced the story telling.

Prepare yourself, because reading 'The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess' feels like falling into a particularly grim fever dream. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way! But this book is trippy, and leans harder and harder into stomach-turning body horror with each passing chapter.

There are a lot of layers to this one, but the basic set-up is this: Sydney, a recovering addict who now has her life together with her loving boyfriend and son, is assaulted by a burglar while home alone one night, and wakes the next day with hazy, confusing memories of what happened after he tied her up. But, as a detective starts pushing to find answers, what actually transpired — and how she viciously, gruesomely turned the tables on the home invader — slowly begins to come back to her, along with some other shocking realizations.

I love horror novels, so I enjoyed where the story ends up going overall. However the road to get there felt needlessly murky and confusing (much like Sydney’s own memories, which was probably the point). I can see a lot of people giving up on this book when things start to get bizarre.

That being said, I think the pay off is worth it (at least it was for me). There’s some great stuff in here about the nature of addiction and the role it plays in our lives regardless of whether it still has us in its grips or not. Also thought the exploration of “love as performance” within a relationship was really interesting, especially when viewed through the lens of a male partner who thinks he knows best, even at the expense of a woman’s agency.

Thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for a chance to read this book. I love the horror/thriller genre but this one just didn't do it for me. As other reviewers have said, there were a lot of loose ends left dangling and I didn't connect with some of the characters.

this book was really engaging and kept me reading & anticipating more.

overall the writing was beautiful, but there was a lot of descriptions that just… didnt make sense. this author seems to want to show just how big their vocabulary actually is.

the main character, Sydney, was the only character that i could actually recognize. This may just be a me thing, but it was really hard to keep track of the characters?

overall, this is a wonderful SCI FI horror (only marketed as horror on netgalley, and it seems that way until you get about halfway through the book) that made my heart race for most of the time i was reading it. once i picked the book up i couldnt put it down.

thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC i received in exchange for an honest review.