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This short book blew me away. From the first page to the last, I couldn't pull my eyes away. Dark, sad, disturbing, and beautifully written. I will absolutely read it again and definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys horror.

Again, this is very dark and graphic. But not gratuitously graphic. So good though. ( )

A deeply dark novella exploring not the monsters that go bump in the night, but the monsters we create. Through abject emotional manipulation, sexual abuse, physical violence, and neglect, a young girl is stripped of her humanity. Becoming a remorseless manipulator and killer. Devoid of emotion, empathy, or moral boundaries, she becomes like the maggots she admires from her True Crime rags.

The first chapters are absolutely brutal. I mean, it goes to a dark, dark place right away. The abuse and its descriptions are not easy to digest. It sets the tone of this book for sure. Rough but enjoyable ride of dark and broken of the kind of monster created rather than imagined. ( )

Welp. That was a quick and brutal read. Although I liked this book a lot, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, especially not anyone who has suffered any sort of abuse in their life. I find it cathartic, but I am aware that most people don't. There are no happy endings or life lessons here. Just very damaged people leading very damaged lives.

Despite Suzanne's murderous acts and unhinged behavior in the first half, I felt so much sympathy for her. In the second half her truly valuable relationships fell apart. So did she. None of us can be protected, not really. We can only build stronger barriers around ourselves.

Just an observation:

The oddest thing about the book was the lack of an era. It seemed unstuck in time. Sometimes it felt as if it took place in the 1950s or '60s - Especially when she described the True Crime magazine. There was no mention of anything digital aside from the kid stealing a flat screen television at the beginning of the book. During the first half of the novella her world was so impoverished that it wasn't surprising that she wasn't wired in, but some of the other references didn't make sense to an era with flat screen televisions. The girl on the road had credit cards, but no cell phone. The motel where they rented a room was less than $30.

The latter half of the book was similarly disjointed in time and place. The foster parents were SAH mother-type, the do-gooder fatherly type, going to church, everything was by "what the experts say", etc. She was a teenage girl with a part-time job at the local drive-through, holding her own to stave off sexual shenanigans, but ultimately enduring endless sexually disrespectful crap from boys/men as part of life. It felt like life in the 1970s.

FYI with the animal abuse. It's easy to see coming and the eyes can easily skip over it and get the overall drift without the details. It's just a tough read. Child abuse is as hard to read as animal abuse and again, like [b:The Girl Next Door|179735|The Girl Next Door|Jack Ketchum|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1298460378l/179735._SY75_.jpg|1109091], I wouldn't recommend this to anyone with kids. The main character and her brother suffer horribly. ( )