Dive into the horror of S.E. Green’s twisted tale of unquestionable evil.
This book had so much potential.
This is one of those books that sounded really great, might even have been.. but it was either the wrong time and state of mind or you just wanted to like it so much that you convince yourself that it probably wasn’t all that bad.
Yep. That’s where this review begins..
Forewarning: There will be spoilers.
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Let me begin with.. I had decently high hopes for this book. Suspense/ thriller/ horror are riveting in a way that other genre’s just can’t match. The heart pounding, hair raising adrenaline rush of manufactured terror is almost irresistible.
Write my deepest fears alive and it’s all good reading, right?
Twin girls abducted and held captive in the woods by a madman, one comes back alive, the other is never found. Now an adult, and recovering from a breakdown three months prior, Caroline gets a visit from her foster father Dr. Vincent DeMurr with news of a case she can’t refuse.
Three girls are dead, their bodies showing signs of cannibalism.
And we’re off.
“Most serial killers are well thought of, until they’re not.”
-Caroline
My complaints you ask?
First? I struggled with the decision to keep reading this at 30% of the way through and that’s just never a good sign.
The storyline is so riddled with sudden flashbacks and sporadic scene changes that it will have you shaking your poor head and reader in frustration. Thoughts and situations seem fragmented, unorganized, and almost unfinished in parts.. Enough so that even Caroline doesn’t appear to know what’s going on. The inconsistencies build up.
“Why then, do I not feel the satisfaction that comes with wrapping things up?”
You’re probably thinking that as the story progresses the world building or character growth might inspire renewed hope for this reading experience. I’m afraid not. There is essentially no world building. No.. Really. The background settings are merely there to get you from point a to b.
The lack of any real emotional growth with the characters is a detail I just couldn’t overlook. Caroline is supposedly this highly intelligent, genuinely gifted profiler(I emphasize ‘supposedly’)and yet.. she’s unable to differentiate between her profiling ‘connections’ and having hallucinations. It’s then repeatedly noted that all of it seems awfully similar to when she was being drugged but not one person suggests that this girl see an actual doctor. I feel the promise of ‘Caroline’ herself was left unrealized. There should have been much more beyond her usefulness, naivety, and trauma.
Fallon, Caroline’s boyfriend, and another one of Dr. DeMurr’s foster children.. left only a vague impression all around. His character was protective of her but flat and forgettable. The lovers were seemingly too damaged for any kind of deep, passionate relationship.
“Are Fallon and I attracted to each other because we’re both internet-checklist psychopaths?”
-Caroline
Dr. Vincent DeMurr? Now he’s a piece of work. He’d be outright unlikable if you weren’t mildly curious what he was up to every other minute. His constant machinations in an effort to control Caroline were as disturbing as they were obvious. He was(in my opinion) the most developed personality in the book, though it becomes apparent early on that he has had an unhealthy obsession with Caroline since she was a girl.
We’re supposed to believe no one notices he keeps collecting traumatized children? Suspicious much?
“You seem to be making a lot of independent decisions these days. You used to include me in your processes.”
-Vincent to Caroline
You would think spending the entire book snapping back to past events, flashbacks, and nightmares.. That it would feel like there was some eventual explanation for what happened with Caroline and her sister’s kidnapping. And there was. The finale was a massive convergence of information that was there and gone before you could process who did what and how.. With all the subtlety of walking into a wall, too.
Don’t get me wrong, I do feel like my questions were answered and most loose ends were tied up but.. This one makes me shake my head. I can honestly say I probably would have liked it more had I not set my expectations so high.
“I wait to feel something but nothing comes. I am blessedly blank.”
-Caroline
I would like to apologize to this author. While I understand that a lot of blood, sweat, and tears probably went into making this book possible. It’s regretful that I didn’t care for it more. I wanted to. The potential is there. My overall opinion is that.. had there been more cohesion, this could have been a mind blowing experience.
I hope that my own opinions of this one book do not dissuade you from finding out for yourself whether you like it. S.E. Green has written many other books and I have every intention of reading some of those as well.
Look her up, check them out, and just keep reading!
Buy it on Amazon here.
