Review: Three Days in the Pink Tower by EV Knight

December 05, 2022

This is such a painful and powerful read.

Three Days In The Pink Tower

Released July 2022

Source: Received for Review Consideration

Dark Fiction | Goodreads | Amazon

Josey Claypool begins the summer before her senior year at a carnival, where a fortune teller with milky-white eyes gives her a foreboding tarot reading. She’s spooked, but nothing could prepare her for the following day when two strange men show up at her front door.

Josey is kidnapped at gunpoint and brought to a pink cabin in the woods where she is held prisoner. In her darkest moment, the fortune teller appears and gives her a deck of tarot cards, which she must cast and interpret in a fight for her life.

In this work of speculative autofiction, award-winning author EV Knight reclaims the narrative of her own past in an exploration of trauma, agency, and survival.

My 2 Cents for Free!

Several reviewers have already said this book is not an easy one to read (or review) and they’re not exaggerating. The author has bravely taken her own horrific lived experience of her kidnapping and rape to fuel this story of trauma leaving readers with a novella of strength, survival, and retribution. She could’ve written a memoir but instead she said fuck those guys and fuck those people who attempt to victim blame and she took all of that justifiable rage and wrote this book instead. If you’re in a good spot to handle the content, it’s a powerful read worth your reading time.

Josey is a pretty teen who has a bright future ahead of her when, one terrible day, everything is derailed by two vile men and a gun. But before all of that happens, we get to know Josey. She’s flirty and free and enjoying her life. The story opens at a carnival where Josey gets lost in a mirrored not-so-fun house and has a disturbing encounter with a creeper. Already shaken, she visits a tarot reader whose reading is unsettling, to say the least. This sets up everything that is to come and also envelops you in Josey’s surroundings as well as the inner workings of her mind. The sounds, the smells, and the experiences put you quite firmly in her world and fill you with a relentless feeling of anxiety and dread that will cling to you long after you turn the final page.

I had to read this story in small doses because it is a lot to take in but in no way do I regret reading it. The writing is quite beautiful and the weaving in of the tarot is such a compelling and thoughtful part of the story. The cover, a haunting artistic rendering of the (dreaded) Tower card, tells you a bit about what you’re in for here in a way that ties in with elements from the story inside. It’s all so well put together. Three Days In the Pink Tower is an exploration of trauma that looks intimately at the disgusting face of evil and allows the writer to take back her power. It’s an important book that I hope many will take the time to read.