The New York Times bestseller "The Snow Garden" is a disturbing gothic novel in which no one is what they seem and everyone appears to have attended the "Flowers in the Attic" school of incestual and manipulative sexual relationships.

Set at the fictional college of Atherton University in the eastern United States, "The Snow Garden" is about Kathryn, a freshman who chose this school to get as far away as possible from the past she left behind in San Francisco, her best friend Randall, a gay man with an even shadier past, and their assorted roommates, friends, and lovers--including Randall's Don Juan roommate Jessie, Randall's lover Professor Eric Eberman, and Kathryn's African-American lesbian roommate April.

The story begins with the apparent suicide of Professor Eberman's wife and follows the secrets that unravel because of it, secrets which eventually threaten to destroy a lot of relationships and more than a few careers.

While "The Snow Garden" certainly keeps you guessing, it is more than a little implausible that a random collection of freshman students would have so many bizarre sexual secrets (although the fact that almost all of Rice's female characters have survived some sort of sexual abuse as children is, sadly, very realistic).

In an interesting departure from many mainstream novels, the lesbian character April in "The Snow Garden" is actually more healthy and well-adjusted than the rest of the characters; in fact, Rice makes lesbians look like fundamentalist Christians compared to the heterosexual and gay male characters. Unfortunately, however, this seems to be April's only raison d'etre: to balance out all the bizarre characters and to give Kathryn someone to talk to when Randall suddenly starts pulling away.

The novel is written well enough and the story moves quickly as Rice delves into the psyche of his twisted characters, but somewhere along the way, as the story progresses and one dramatic secret after another is revealed, it turns into an overly-sensational made-for-TV movie, complete with cults, drugs, mysterious disappearances, betrayal, and murder--the novelistic equivalent of "Mother, May I Dance With Danger?" in which the danger appears to be in attending college at all.

Despite this, the book does succeed in being suspenseful, even if it's more than a little disturbing. Some lesbian and bisexual readers may find it an interesting read if for no other reason than the fun of seeing heterosexual characters look depraved for a change.

Amazon.com: "The Snow Garden"