The Daughters of Block Island

Carmen’s ambitious debut stumbles in its deployment of gothic tropes. One afternoon, Boston attorney Thalia Mills receives a letter from a woman named Blake Bronson, who provides proof that she is Thalia’s long-lost sister. The letter is addressed from Block Island, a “dark and dismal” place “full of secretive coves and more secretive people” off the coast of Rhode Island that Thalia has stopped visiting for undisclosed reasons. After Googling Blake’s name, Thalia discovers that the woman’s corpse was found in a Block Island bed and breakfast the day after she sent the letter. Determined to learn more about her sister’s life and death, Thalia returns to Block Island to investigate. Along the way, Carmen weaves in flashbacks recounting Blake’s experiences on the island, which are stuffed with grating self-aware winks (“Blake knows she’s in a gothic horror novel the moment she steps off the rain-slicked ferry”) and Scream-style deconstructions of the genre (“If a storm descends, remain in your bedroom!”). The timelines alternate until Thalia makes some shocking discoveries. Carmen clearly reveres her influences, but she fails to conjure a convincingly creepy atmosphere, and her stabs at metafictional humor fall flat. This misses the mark. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Oct.)