Eric LaRocca

I had so much hope this would be good.

This book goes from "I'm glad to have someone to share my pain with" to "I want to keep you as my property" with too many steps skipped over. A little less zero to a hundred and more twenty-five to a hundred. It almost works if you squint.

Agnes tells her mother she's gay in a funny way while a fruit peeler is passed around.

I don't really care about the big part of the book dedicated to "what have you done today to deserve your eyes" where Agnes focuses on her eyes and not her other senses or maybe a working tongue, teeth that are healthy, hands, ears, a nose, any of that? Just her eyes. It's a really fucked up mentality but okay.

In so many words. 'My Mom found out I'm gay and this apple peeler is a family heirloom to remind me of her disowning me' is such a wild plot.

Now after that we find out the objective of girl who doesn't matter, Zoey, is to dominate someone else and treat them like a sex puppy. Ew. Then she says like a mother with a child. EW. Stop making it worse.

This devolves into Zoey controlling when she can bathe, eat, what she can do. It's a devolving mess of shock and horror because why not do that? It's a disappointing unraveling of a book.

It could be horror if things were better paced but here it's certainly not. It's a bit of shock content but not the right amount.

1.5 stars. You had me and you dropped me.… (altro)

LaRocca does write well; that part of the blurbs is true--but calling this one of the 50 best horror books ever is insane. Of the three stories, the title story is the longest and concerns manipulation by email and instant messaging. I have no doubt there is some sick individual who would actually go along with this in a desperate search for love. But being somewhat original doesn't make it all that good. Memorable yes, but I think the best horror makes us feel that it could happen to us--the Exorcist for instance. When I read it I was not much older than Regan and for all I knew I might be possessed the next day. The second of LaRocca's stories is a bit of a muddle and goes on too long, pitting religious belief vs. non-belief, but not in any useful way. The third story starts out a bit like a Roald Dahl story, where you are expecting a surprise ending. Again, it is well-written, but it just asks too much suspension of disbelief by the reader. LaRocca is a writer to watch I guess, but he hasn't quite gotten there yet.… (altro)