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Devotion and Duty
Sick is a haunting psychological horror that follows a marriage unraveling into madness as devotion, illness, and manipulation, and blurs into a claustrophobic battle for control and belonging. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This story was born from a nightmare. I dreamt I was a woman whose life was decaying around her as she cared for her sickly husband. By the end of the dream, she discovered the man she loved and trusted was far more ill than she could imagine. Her disorientation and fear pulled at me, and I knew I had to write the story.
How did you balance the ambiguity of John’s illness so the reader constantly questions what’s real and what’s manipulation?
I wanted to put people inside Susan’s mind, in the perspective of your typical person who feels the duty to care for their loved ones, no matter what is required. She has let her husband’s illness take over her life, so much so that she no longer has one. Of course, caregivers think, this person is sick, they need me. But what is the cost to yourself? When does devotion and duty become co-dependency? You can only be manipulated if you allow people to do so. How much of it is your own fault?
The book relies heavily on atmosphere and sensory detail rather than overt scares. How do you approach building tension through subtlety rather than shock?
I think the dark, quiet desires, motivations, and needs of our inner selves are more terrifying than your typical monsters, serial killers, or jump scares. It’s the realization that the frame you put around your life story to keep you safe could be a lie, and that you have been preyed upon by those you love and trust. It’s being slowly bled dry and not knowing until it’s too late. Worst of all is realizing you had a hand in your own demise.
What do you hope readers take away about love, neediness, and the moral gray zones that exist inside unhealthy relationships?
I hope readers will think more deeply about what they’re giving and taking in relationships, to be aware when someone is manipulating and using them, and where they themselves might be abusing a person in their life in a mental or emotional way.
Most victims can’t conceive that someone who claims to love them is silently exploiting them for their own gain. Likewise, abusers often don’t know that what they are doing is toxic. These are survival mechanisms they learned as children.
That is why I showed both Susan’s and John’s sides of the story. Neither of them is innocent.
Unfortunately, once confronted, not all abusers will acknowledge to themselves, much less to others, that they were damaging the people around them. It takes a brave person, a genuinely good-hearted and self-aware person, to be willing to admit their flaws and work to change them. Most narcissists and psychopaths do not have any empathy for others, nor true self-awareness that extends beyond their own self-importance.
I hope this story will wake up victims to possible abuse and tip off abusers that maybe they are the villain, and not the hero, of their own story.
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Charming and enigmatic, but very sick.
Born into wealth and prestige, John lost his family’s fortune to the mysterious illness that has now left him bedridden, and Susan’s life revolves around his care.
Years of devotion have left her exhausted and frustrated, yet she’s determined to scrape together whatever resources she can to keep John comfortable and happy—including stealing Demerol from the doctor’s office where she works to feed his growing dependence on painkillers.
As John’s condition continues to baffle doctors, Susan uncovers a secret from his childhood and the chilling cause of his illness.
Now that she knows the truth, can she put an end to the madness?
Christa Wojciechowski delivers a twisted psychological suspense novel for readers who like their fiction sick, sharp, and unforgettable.
Sick
Sick is a deeply unsettling psychological horror novel that follows the toxic, codependent relationship between Susan and her chronically ill husband, John. What begins as a tale of dutiful care gradually descends into something far more sinister. The book explores themes of love, martyrdom, manipulation, and the blurry line between devotion and delusion. At the center is a marriage teetering on the edge of madness, where illness, real or imagined, becomes both the glue and the weapon that binds them.
It wasn’t just the disturbing imagery or the suffocating atmosphere, it was how intimate it all felt. I was drawn in by the clean, evocative prose and the slow, relentless build-up of dread. Author Christa Wojciechowski doesn’t rely on cheap scares. Instead, she weaponizes empathy, using Susan’s exhaustion and desperation like a knife twisting in your gut. Anyone who’s ever been trapped in a one-sided relationship or felt obligated to care for someone while losing themselves will feel that sting.
John is infuriating. He is charming, pathetic, childlike, and monstrous all at once. I found myself swaying between pity and revulsion. And Susan is no angel either. Her love feels noble one minute and complicit the next. Wojciechowski manages to make the reader complicit, too. I kept asking myself why I felt sorry for someone who was clearly manipulating the woman who loved him. But then I’d see his suffering again, and it would all blur. That’s the genius of this book. It messes with your moral compass.
There’s a smell to this book. Not literally, of course, but in the way Wojciechowski describes bodies, fluids, wounds, and rooms filled with neglect. And beneath it all, I could feel this aching, awful love. The writing doesn’t scream. It whispers. And that’s so much worse. It made me uncomfortable, not with violence or gore, but with how honest it was about how far people will go to feel needed.
There were times when I wanted to yell at Susan to run. Other times, I wanted to wrap her in a blanket and tell her it was okay to stop giving so much of herself. I think that’s why the story is so effective, it holds a mirror up to all the ways we lose ourselves in caring for others. The manipulation in this book is terrifying, not because it’s extreme, but because it’s familiar.
If you want a slow-burn, character-driven descent into psychological horror that feels both intimate and raw, Sick is a must-read. It’s perfect for readers who enjoy books like Gone Girl or The Shining, but crave something smaller in scale and more emotionally claustrophobic. It’s not just horror. It’s heartbreak in disguise. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the darker sides of love, mental illness, and the twisted things we do in the name of care.
Pages: 282 | ASIN: B0FL5RTYQ9
With Angel’s Wings
![With Angel's Wings by [Collins, Stephanie A.]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51y6ZEj8%2B-L.jpg)
With Angel’s Wings, by Stephanie Collins, is one mother’s raw and heart-wrenching account of her life with two daughters with special needs. Written as a third-person account with name changes, the author describes each and every obstacle encountered as she struggled to come to terms with her daughters’ challenges while simultaneously dealing with a long string of physicians, specialists, and therapists. Laura, as the author calls the young mother, fights an uphill battle from the moment she is told her days-old infant has a heart defect–the first of many. While facing a seemingly unending barrage of personal hurdles, Laura somehow learns to cope with the endless physical and emotional demands placed upon her family by tiny Hannah’s diagnosis of Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome.
This author’s life story as a work of fiction is almost indescribable. I do not believe I have ever read a book that kept me as breathless and as anxious as this one. Laura’s laundry list of traumatic events ranging from her newborn’s purple feet and hands to her seizures lasting for hours on end is mentally exhausting to read. Her life is so full of twists and turns and drama surrounding Hannah’s diagnosis and subsequent health scares, the author has no need to embellish with flowery language and lengthy stretches of narrative. There is, literally, no room or time left to dress up her text. This book reads as a journal of heartache peppered with true love.
Collins is honest and open with her feelings about her daughters’ diagnoses. As Laura, she sugarcoats nothing. As strong as she is, Laura reveals her vulnerability as an overwhelmed young mother. The reader aches to watch her contemplate, time and again, a way out. Her frustration as a parent fighting her way through the healthcare system is one with which many readers will be able to relate. In addition to her day-to-day battle with fevers, seizures, hospital visits, and mounting financial woes, Laura faces the virtually indescribable audacity of an ex-husband who lacks not only both sympathy and empathy but a soul, as well.
As a parent and a teacher, I have never read a more authentic and touching account of life as a mother or a more revealing account of what caring for a child with special needs truly entails. Emily’s early signs of autism hit home with me as a teacher. No one knows the struggle of helping a child on the autism spectrum like a parent. Laura begins accommodating for Emily’s needs long before her diagnosis. She modifies, plans, and tries to remain several steps ahead of meltdowns from early on in Emily’s life. Parents of children with autism will appreciate reading about the way Laura intricately weaves a web of plans on a daily basis to compensate for Emily’s developmental delays.
Though the book is primarily focused on the battle to save Hannah and come to grips with her many needs, the author does a beautiful job of illustrating the relationship Laura develops with Daniel. Daniel, the one shining light in her darkest days, is a rather unlikely saviour. Their love, apparent from early in their friendship, is one that only intensifies through the rigors of identifying and finding ways of successfully coping with all Emily and Hannah’s needs.
There aren’t any options for stars beyond 5, so I am restricted to giving With Angel’s Wings 5 out of 5 stars. The author’s life story, now Laura and Daniel’s as well, is an absolute must-read for any parent, teacher, or caregiver of a child with special needs. There is a love like no other born out of a relationship with these children, and Stephanie Collins has handed readers everywhere the key to unlock hearts and minds and build a better understanding of the struggles faced by many of our family members and friends who have children with special needs living lives like Laura’s.
Pages: 304 | ASIN: B01DL9AXAI
LITERARY TITAN 