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Monday, August 11, 2014

The Girl Next Door

The Girl Next DoorThe Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum


When a pretty girl named Meg moves in next door, young Davy is smitten. Soon, however, Meg's aunt Ruth begins mistreating Meg and invites her children to help. Can Davy help Meg escape? Or will he join in her torment?

This is the twentieth book in my Kindle Unlimited Experiment. For the 30 day trial, I'm only reading books that are part of the program and keeping track what the total cost of the books would have been.

This is one brutal damn book. At the beginning, it felt like Stephen King's coming of age horror, like The Body or It. Then it became darker and darker until it was physically wearing me out to read it.

The Girl Next Door is a story of abuse, torture, and helplessness. Like I said, it's a pretty brutal read. Davy is torn between fitting in and trying to save Meg from the progressively more hellish life at Ruth's house.

Ketchum paints a horrifying picture of life in an abusive environment. The book became increasingly more uncomfortable to read because of his skill at depicting the horrors going on in the basement.

In the end, this was a hard book to rate. I thought it was very powerful but I can't say I actually enjoyed reading it past the halfway mark. The torture was too much but I had to see the book through until the end. The most horrifying thing about the book is that it was based on an actual incident.

I'm giving it a four because of the impact the story and the writing had, not because of any enjoyment or entertainment I got out of the story. I doubt I'll be reading more Ketchum any time soon.

Current Kindle Unlimited Savings Total: $115.39.

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