Allison Buccola’s sophomore thriller The Ascent proves that the most terrifying monsters often wear familiar faces. Following her acclaimed debut, Buccola delivers a masterfully crafted psychological thriller that excavates the buried traumas of cult survival while examining the fierce, sometimes destructive nature of maternal love. This is a novel that lingers long after the final page, its questions echoing like whispers in an empty house.
The Weight of Inherited Trauma
Twenty years after escaping the mysterious disappearance of her commune family, Lee Burton has constructed what appears to be a perfect life in Philadelphia. Married to lawyer Theo with infant daughter Lucy, she’s successfully buried her past as Ophelia Clayborne—the sole survivor of Jacob’s Hill’s vanishing. But new motherhood has awakened something primal and paranoid within her, manifesting as an inability to let Lucy out of her sight and a creeping certainty that danger lurks around every corner.
Buccola’s exploration of postpartum anxiety feels authentically lived-in, capturing the suffocating nature of early motherhood with remarkable precision. Lee’s hypervigilance isn’t merely plot convenience—it’s a believable response to both her traumatic past and the vulnerability that comes with loving someone so completely that their safety becomes your entire world. The author skillfully weaves these maternal anxieties into the larger thriller framework, creating a protagonist whose unreliability stems from love rather than malice.
The Stranger at the Door
When a woman claiming to be Lee’s long-lost sister Mona appears at her doorstep, the carefully constructed walls around Lee’s new identity begin to crumble. This mysterious figure—later revealed as Maria Salerno—represents everything Lee desperately wants to believe: that her family survived, that she wasn’t truly abandoned, that the gaping wound of her childhood might finally heal.
The dynamic between Lee and “Mona” forms the novel’s emotional core, showcasing Buccola’s understanding of how desperately we want to trust those who offer us what we most need to hear. Lee’s willingness to overlook red flags—the inconsistencies in Mona’s stories, her evasiveness about the past twenty years—reads as painfully human rather than frustratingly naive. We’ve all been susceptible to those who tell us exactly what our hearts are crying out to believe.
Marriage as Battlefield
Perhaps the novel’s most disturbing revelation isn’t the identity of the impostor, but the slow unveiling of Theo’s true nature. Buccola crafts him as a particularly insidious type of manipulator—one who genuinely believes in his own goodness while systematically undermining his wife’s reality. His affair with Maria and subsequent murder feel like the inevitable conclusion of a man who views women as either problems to be solved or obstacles to be removed.
The portrayal of their marriage disintegration rings with uncomfortable authenticity. Theo’s concerns about Lee’s mental health aren’t entirely unfounded—she is struggling—but his weaponization of her vulnerability reveals a calculating cruelty that makes the reader complicit in questioning Lee’s perceptions. It’s a masterful example of how gaslighting operates, making both character and reader doubt what they know to be true.
Structural Brilliance and Narrative Pacing
The novel’s four-part structure—Sleepwalking, The Awakening, Resistance, and The Ascent—mirrors both Lee’s psychological journey and the cult’s original teachings about enlightenment stages. This isn’t mere literary cleverness; it reinforces how the past continues to shape the present in ways both obvious and subtle. The childhood flashbacks, while sometimes feeling slightly disconnected from the main narrative thrust, provide crucial context for understanding Lee’s psychological landscape.
Buccola demonstrates impressive control over pacing, allowing tension to build gradually before accelerating into a genuinely shocking climax. The revelation of Maria’s true fate and Theo’s involvement feels both surprising and inevitable—the mark of expertly planted seeds coming to fruition. The courtroom sequences that follow provide satisfying resolution while acknowledging that justice doesn’t always heal trauma.
The Unreliable Narrator’s Dilemma
Lee’s status as an unreliable narrator creates one of the novel’s greatest strengths and occasional weaknesses. Her history of psychiatric hospitalization and documented “episodes” makes every revelation questionable, forcing readers to constantly reevaluate what they believe. This technique works brilliantly in creating suspense, but occasionally the ambiguity becomes frustrating rather than intriguing.
The Pittsburgh fire incident, revealed through flashbacks, particularly demonstrates Buccola’s skill at showing how past trauma can create present vulnerabilities. Lee’s breakdown wasn’t random psychosis but a logical response to losing her aunt—the one person who provided stability after her childhood devastation. This contextualization transforms what could have been simple “crazy woman” tropes into genuinely empathetic character development.
Cult Dynamics and Religious Manipulation
Buccola’s depiction of Jacob’s Hill avoids both romanticizing commune life and demonizing all alternative communities. Christopher emerges as a complex antagonist—genuinely charismatic and occasionally caring, yet ultimately willing to destroy those he claims to love. The cult’s gradual isolation from the outside world feels organic rather than cartoonish, showing how manipulation often operates through small compromises rather than dramatic declarations.
The novel’s handling of religious themes deserves particular praise. Rather than dismissing all spiritual seeking as dangerous delusion, Buccola shows how legitimate human needs—for community, purpose, and transcendence—can be exploited by those with darker motivations. This nuanced approach elevates the material beyond simple cult horror into something more psychologically complex.
Minor Criticisms and Areas for Growth
While The Ascent by Allison Buccola succeeds as both psychological thriller and maternal anxiety study, certain elements feel less fully developed. The supporting characters, particularly Lee’s therapy group members and some of Theo’s colleagues, occasionally read as plot devices rather than fully realized individuals. The novel’s resolution, while satisfying on a plot level, leaves some emotional threads unresolved—particularly Lee’s ongoing relationship with trauma and her ability to trust her own perceptions.
The pacing in the middle section occasionally slackens, particularly during some of the therapy scenes that, while thematically relevant, don’t always advance the central mystery effectively. Additionally, some of the cult backstory feels slightly underdeveloped compared to the present-day psychological drama, though this may be intentional given Lee’s incomplete memories.
Literary Merit and Genre Excellence
Buccola’s prose demonstrates significant growth from typical thriller conventions, employing a more literary approach that prioritizes character psychology over mere plot mechanics. Her descriptions of Philadelphia neighborhoods feel lived-in and authentic, grounding the supernatural elements of the mystery in recognizable reality. The author’s background in law brings authenticity to the courtroom sequences without overwhelming the narrative with unnecessary technical detail.
The novel’s exploration of motherhood particularly stands out in a genre that often reduces women to victims or villains. Lee’s fierce protection of Lucy never feels performative—it emerges from genuine love complicated by legitimate fear. This emotional authenticity elevates what could have been a standard “woman in peril” thriller into something more psychologically sophisticated.
Final Verdict: A Compelling Evolution
The Ascent by Allison Buccola succeeds as both a gripping thriller and a nuanced exploration of how past trauma shapes present relationships. While it occasionally stumbles under the weight of its ambitious psychological portraiture, Buccola has crafted a novel that respects both its genre conventions and its readers’ intelligence. The book feels appropriate—it’s a strong, engaging read that falls just short of being a masterpiece.
For readers who enjoyed Gillian Flynn’s exploration of unreliable narrators in Sharp Objects or Ruth Ware’s atmospheric psychological suspense in One Perfect Couple, The Ascent by Allison Buccola offers similar pleasures while carving out its own distinct voice. It’s a novel that trusts its readers to navigate ambiguity while delivering the emotional and narrative satisfaction that excellent thrillers demand.
This sophomore effort establishes Buccola as a thriller writer to watch, one capable of blending psychological insight with genuine suspense. While not every element perfectly coheres, the novel’s emotional honesty and atmospheric dread create a reading experience that’s both disturbing and deeply moving—exactly what the best psychological thrillers should achieve.