Reviews
The subject matter of this book is depressing, terrifying...and so unbelievably heartbreaking because you know even though some artistic liberties were taken, this actually happened to someone like you and me...and this is just the one horror that has been named from all the other nameless horrors we probably will never know about. I think whatever i would say would be trite so i'm having the book say my review for me. "Kids were powerless. Almost by definition. Kids were supposed to endure humiliation, or run away from it. If you protested, it had to be oblique. You ran into your room & slammed the door. You screamed & yelled. You brooded through dinner. You acted out - or broke things accidentally on purpose...and that was about it. All the guns in your arsenal. But what you did not do was you did not stand up to an adult and say go fuck yourself in so many words. You did not simply stand there and calmly say no." While i'm thankful that for the most part, there are laws that try to safe guard children, I want people to read this book and not only be simply horrified about the callous disregard of a child's life or simply any life but really ponder on how for the most part, adults actively encourage demand that children just take anything dished out at them (especially in this part of the world i'm from) by adults. 'Being "just a kid" took on a whole new depth of meaning, of ominous threat, that maybe we knew was there all along but we'd never had to think about before...We were just kids. We were property. We belonged to our parents, body and soul. It meant we were doomed in the face of any real danger from the adult world & that meant hopelessness, and humiliation and anger' I get that the subject matter of this book is horrifying, even though Ketchum himself wrote that he even had to tone it down (You can imagine what it would have been like if he had actually put it all there) but i'd really encourage anyone who has pushed it aside because of said horror to read this book, because this isn't some sort of gratuitous book on horrifying things that could happen to people, there's layers to this story
In terms of a disturbing read, which is what I was looking for when I chose this book, the book absolutely succeeds. I had just read Ketchum's Off Season and although they're two very different books in terms of subject matter, Ketchum has a distinctly disturbing writing style that's as unsettling as it is completely horrifying.
4⭐️
Genre: Historical thriller (I’m not sure, I searched up on google to find a name that describes a true crime based fiction book and this came up)
Age group : Adult
POV : First person
Characters: 1/5 ⭐️
Plot: 4/5 ⭐️
Setting/Themes: 3/5 ⭐️
Writing: 4/5 ⭐️
Terror factor: 5/5 ⭐️
• Please check TWs & CWs. (Very heavy triggers)
• mature language, torture, starvation,abuse of a minor, child abuse, rape, sexual violence and sexual harassment, burning, branding, degradation, severe torture, murder, death & so much more.
“In the artificial glare of the work light, in the dawn that for us was not a dawn, she died.”
Let me start by saying, please go in with lots of caution. I picked up this book thinking it was about a serial killer. I did not read the blurb but I wanted to go in blind. It was way worse. A lot more sinister. Few chapters in and I realised that this was the fictionised story of Sylvia Likens. And Sylvia’s case broke my heart, truly. Nevertheless, I pulled through the book, to see if my suspicions were right. They were (the author mentions it in his author’s note)
If you’re looking for something so severely disturbing that will make you begin questioning your faith in humanity? This is the book for it. Again I say, please tread carefully. The book goes into heavy detail.
Yes, despite it all. I have no soft spot for Dave whatsoever. He tried to help sure, but it was too late. At the end of the day, he stood there too. And for the rest of them? I can’t even begin to tell you how much I wished they were dead. But the sad reality’s that they all truly are roaming free. Because what? They were children? That’s bullhshit, they were old enough to know what they were doing. I’m not saying that they’re not victims of their mother’s manipulation, they sure are. But they played an equally horrible role in Meg’s demise.
Ruth. No words. Glad she’s dead. Glad she died that way even.
This was a very quick and easy read for me, I think I read it in less than 24 hours. It was a tad bit slow for me, I think, it just felt like it dragged on in parts The chapters were also super short which kind of annoyed me but I get why the author did that Also, what was with the random short stories at the end?
This was absolutely horrendous. The writing was wonderful, but the story was so awful and heartbreaking.
This is a painful, awful, brilliant examination of cruelty and evil. It is based on the real case of sixteen-year old Sylvia Likens, a girl who was abused by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski. Gertrude not only abused her, but manipulated her own children and other children in the neighborhood to join in with her. This is a book that could so easily have been trashy exploitation of a terrible crime committed against a little girl. Yet, for reasons that I have trouble putting into words, it never feels that way. Reading this felt like when I read "Night" or "This Way For The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen." It becomes so awful that it must be hyperbolic, but the truth is that it is not. Unlike those two stories, this does not tout itself as non-fiction. Names are changed, as are certain events (in a sickening twist, this book actually tones down some of the things that happened in the real case), in order to provide distance and leave room for Ketchum to write without trampling all over the memory of Likens. This is a hard book to read, and it is absolutely one that you could go the rest of your life without having to experience. However, if anything that I have just written intrigues you, it is worth your time.
A sad, terrible story based on true events... very difficult to read at some spots. Check trigger warnings!!
Nope, could not do it. This, to me, is a clunky novel that idolizes torture. The characters are clunky, the writing is okay but has it's rough patches, especially during the torture scenes. I quit about halfway through, when a character we have for their pov is talking about how beautiful the victim is when she's tied up, basically waiting to be tortured. No thanks. And that's not to say I don't read messed up books. A much better book, My Lovely Wife, and even You, have messed up protagonists with slanted points of view that show You how twisted they are. The authors of those have managed to achieve that without making it seem like a fantasy. To me, this is an example of torture p*rn. I don't want to keep reading it.
Hurt people, hurt people. Okay so it's probably wrong to say that I "enjoyed" this book, but I genuinely did. Not because I liked the actions of the characters or anything like that, but because it was well paced, the characters were all really well drawn and I found myself able to see both the humanity and the evil in those who committed the atrocities throughout the story. Maybe I'm just a hardened old woman who's already seen and heard it all before, or maybe I just went into this book with far too many 'Words Of Warning' by other readers who've reviewed it, but I really wasn't as grossed out or shocked as I'd expected myself to be. I was already anticipating something gruesome and cruel and hard to deal with, so there was a lot less shock factor involved for me; even though I really didn't know much about what the story was about prior to reading it. Maybe if I'd read this when I was younger it might have had more of a disturbing effect, but for some reason I put off reading it until today and maybe I left it too late. That's not to say that the book isn't incredibly graphic and full of very visceral descriptions of torture - it totally is - and Ketchum does a fantastic job of saying so much, without over-egging the pudding (the way the foreword's author Stephen King tends to). His prose is sparse, his detail is laser focused and you really do get to spend what feels like quite a bit of time with the characters, despite this being a pretty short book. I liked Ketchum's writing style; his conversational, straight forward story-telling, peppered with the occasional barbs of wit or reflection that really hit home. But I wasn't repulsed or horrified by any of it. Like I said, I'm an old woman. I've seen it all before. Those saying that this is "too much" or an "unbelievable" level of drawn out torture obviously live in a world completely free from the knowledge that this kind of thing happens more often than they'd like to be aware of. I don't mean that there's an insane sadist on every street, just waiting to be outed, but spend a few hours chatting to people in law enforcement or social services and you'll realise just how often this kind of thing goes on behind closed doors. A lot of the perspective of this book comes from the narrator explaining that this was a time and a place where kids were a lot less likely to be believed whenever they spoke out about the actions of a tormentor; especially if the perpetrator was a respected adult. And whilst I imagine that's true to a certain extent, there's still a veil of secrecy and manipulation that abusers weave around their victims today which paralyses the one's they're tormenting, to the point where they see no way out. No way of getting someone to believe them. I know we have helplines and services and teachers and other people in positions of care are trained to see the signs, in order to help intervene. But this shit still goes on. And yes, to the extent of that we see in this book. So it's not at all unbelievable. Unlike some readers I completely sympathised with the narrator because they were a victim too. Abusers are known for making co-conspirators out of other vulnerable, impressionable people in order to secure their own position of power and control. The narrator's character was completely believable and his actions totally understandable. Ketchum did a great job of making us see the predicament he, a 12 year old boy, was in himself. This was the first Ketchum book I've read and based on this story, I'd happily read more of his stuff. Especially if he keeps his "horror" to the kind of evil inflicted by the worst monsters of all: human beings. I was relieved to be reading this after a very dull previous book and zipped through it in about 3 hours. Would I recommend it to others? Sure. If you're not of a particularly sensitive disposition and you want to see the kind of book everyone wishes that Stephen King was able to write. But most people will probably find some of it a bit disturbing, so you know. Be warned and all that.
Pretty terrifying being based on facts..
I was bored. The book starts with Davey looking back on his life as an adolescent and regretting the events that happened when Meg and Susan moved in next door. Ruth was a horrible person. She found Meg and Susan to be easy helpless targets and began torturing them. After a while she had numerous neighborhood adolescents helping with the continued torture. Without a doubt the acts preformed against the two girls make for a disturbing story. However, I just found that the way it was told was flat. There were no high and low pints in the story telling. I kept waiting for a little variation but it never came. It was not a bad book, I just found it boring. It should be noted that this book described scenes of disturbing violence against Meg and Susan and rape. If books containing these acts offends you then you should not read this book.
