Night’s Edge by Liz Kerin opens in Salt Lake City in 2010. Ten-year-old Mia’s mother, Izzy, is newly infected with Saratov’s syndrome, a mysterious illness that turns its sufferers into bloodthirsty caricatures of their former selves, possessed of preternatural youth and strength and limitless charisma. The source of Izzy’s illness is her sketchy new boyfriend, Devon, a disreputable loser with suspicious habits (only pretends to drink beer, only hangs out at night, feeds Izzy his own blood, eats the houseguests).
Moving between 2010, when Saratov’s syndrome is just a rumor, and the present day, when citizens must subject themselves to blood scans to enter businesses and Saras, as they’re called, are shuttled away to sinister medical facilities upon discovery, Night’s Edge follows Mia’s increasingly difficult struggle to keep her mother’s illness a secret from the outside world. Izzy is able to evade detection by fleeing to Tucson—an unlikely locale for the Saratov’s-afflicted, who cannot bear sunlight—and buying her own restaurant; as the owner, she doesn’t have to scan in. She survives by drinking her daughter’s blood in a gruesome nightly ritual, to which now-twenty-something Mia willingly subjects herself. But Mia and Izzy’s tenuous stasis, and the bounds of their suffocating relationship, are tested when Devon drifts back into Izzy’s life at the same time Mia meets Jade, a charming, freewheeling musician with a few vampiric tendencies of her own. As Izzy pushes herself and her daughter further into danger, Mia is pulled by her growing desire for a life of her own, free from the constraints of her mother’s illness.
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Night’s Edge
Night’s Edge is deftly plotted and swift-moving; Kerin is adept at building tension across her split narrative, and Mia’s backstory adds depth to the present-day narrative in adeptly controlled doses. But it’s the relationships that are the truly standout stuff of the novel, particularly the dense and suffocating codependency that develops between Mia and her mother. Mia’s entire life is reduced to keeping Izzy alive and concealed, even as Izzy’s illness progresses and her actions become more dangerous and unpredictable. In one devastating scene that encapsulates the claustrophobic horror of their lives together, ten-year-old Mia, unable to cope any longer with Izzy’s erratic behavior and obsession with Devon, begs her mother to call on her biological father, whom she has never met, for help. Izzy reacts with characteristic, instantaneous rage. “‘I just thought… Just in case something bad happens, if there were another grown-up around,’” Mia begs. “‘The bad thing already fucking happened, Mia,’” Izzy snarls. “‘We don’t need “another grown-up.” I need you to be the grown-up, okay?’”
The word “vampire” never appears in the novel’s pages, but Saratov’s sufferers bear a distinct resemblance to that best-beloved and most tireless of monsters: They’ve got the sex appeal, the fangs, and the whole drinking-blood-and-catching-fire-in-sunlight thing going, even if they remain unaffected by garlic and crucifixes. (Nobody sparkles.) Kerin allows her creatures of the night plenty of room for human failings without tidy answers as to the origins of their worst impulses and the harms they inflict upon one another. Is Devon a sleazy, predatory douche because he’s a Sara, or is he just a dollar-store Charles Manson? Is Izzy bratty, secretive, manipulative, and breathtakingly cruel because she’s infected with a blood-borne illness, or because she’s an abusive narcissist? A novel like this could easily read like a tedious Reddit post on the traumas of the parentified child, but Kerin deftly navigates these questions, refusing to allow the narrative to settle into easy answers. Mia’s struggle to navigate the debt she feels she owes her mother with her yearning for a life of her own is expertly drawn and deeply resonant.
And it’s not all darkness here: The world of Night’s Edge is studded throughout with funny grounding details. Saras are allergic to caffeine, so parents give their babies coffee as a protective measure, leading to rampant toddler meltdowns; Saras build Facebook groups for the afflicted, as drama-ridden as a suburban Nextdoor page; Mia is so unused to everyday human interaction that she assumes the hot girl at the coffee shop is trying to turn her into a vampire rather than just, you know, flirting. Sometimes the humor is pitch-black: An open-air music festival, rather than screen for Saras, instructs attendees to look out for themselves after dark; being Americans, they bring guns.
Night’s Edge deals out plenty of show-stopping, blood-spattered thrills, but the intensity of Mia’s love for her mother, and the challenges she faces—both internal and external—as she begins to break away from the literal and figurative darkness of her life are what sets the novel apart. There are plenty of treats here for horror fans (though sadly no Lost Boys jokes), but Mia’s journey toward the light will stay with you long after the splatter fades to black.
Night’s Edge is published by Nightfire.
Sarah McCarry’s most recent novel is The Darling Killers. She writes occasional letters about sailing, ice, and books; you can sign up for them here.
