Andrew Neiderman

You're looking at the Chucky doll in the arms of the child on this cover. You're looking at the title. You're thinking those two things cannot be there without both being one in the same. I'll have you know there's not really an evil doll in this. I had to find that out myself but I kind of expected it.

So where do I start? First off Sharon is really a limp dish rag of a person. She trust her husband so much that even though he is making terrible decisions, she thinks oh yeah he says it's a good decision. But at the same time she can't escape him. If she broke up with him where would she go?

Within the first six pages we find out that she's basically dependent on him and he is the breadwinner who can choose who lives and who dies. It's a horrifying life to be so dependent you have no way out and the only way out might ruin your reputation and take you down to homelessness. That's horrifying. He has her by the purse strings. So from the get-go you know that Alex has all of the power in this relationship. They don't even want kids but Alex suddenly decides he needs kids and he just starts plucking them out of the foster care system and raising them. It's almost like he needs to make an army and I don't doubt that he would have picked up a fifth or sixth kid down the road.

It seems like Alex's father is a oddly abusive but good guy in this book and that threw me for a loop. I don't really write this book high. It's a complicated thing did I read this book really fast and enjoy all of it? Yes and no. I enjoyed reading the book but the characters really annoyed me.

It feels like we would have a little bit more investigation into these murders and deaths. I don't know, but usually they investigate the neighbors and the people who were last seen with them and all that stuff and none of that really happens. It's only Sharon who suspects but also is in denial so she's an unreliable investigator in this whole thing. She's also utterly limp and easily plied.

Weak willed woman in writing always seem to come off as they have no spine and no will until the very last moment of the very last scene and then suddenly they are possessed or they are snap to attentiveness and know what needs to be done. This book is no different. I wish she had a bigger spine earlier on and had just started standing up to him but he had done it anyway, because then it would have made her rebellion at the end very obviously about to happen but also totally not just a spur of the moment random spine growth.

I am constantly torn between saying I hate her and that I have met characters and people actually like her in real life and I hated that. I hate that she's an actual character that I have met in a real person. I hate that this kind of person exists. And reading about them always works me up because I don't like to imagine these people existing and just doing stuff like this. Being in these kind of relationships. But it happens. It's awful.

At the end of the day I ended up here because the cover of the book that I got looked like it was a Chucky knock off or a pre-existing Chucky book. And Chucky was never based off of Robert the haunted doll so I wanted to see if this was where he came from. It was likely not in anything but the cover, but it was an interesting journey and I did not fully hate the book I just found it terrifying in a way of I've seen too many lifetime movies and true stories go this way and I did not like how this went. Gave me a little bit of a Children Of The Corn Energy. Very eerie.

3.8 stars.… (altro)

Well, this book was… disappointing. It was borderline horror, which is what I was looking for judging by the cool cover art. I was reminded of this one by the really great book [b:Paperbacks from Hell|33670466|Paperbacks from Hell The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction|Grady Hendrix|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1504436657l/33670466._SX50_.jpg|54542087]. When I was younger, the PIN paperback sat for probably most of a decade on the shelves with my mother’s vast collection of horror paperbacks when I was young at the far end of the hallway by the old swamp cooler. I would flip through them on occasion and sometimes even read a few, I only really completed a handful, unfortunately. My mother had caught me once perusing this book and said it wasn’t appropriate for me and finished with these words of wisdom, “besides it sucked”. The art on this one always entranced me, but I never got past the first few chapters in my perusals. That is until Paperback Hell reminded me of its existence, and I picked up a reprint copy (under the Paperback Hell imprint) and plopped it onto one of my (very tall) to-read stacks.
Now, I’ve finally read it through, it was a quick easy read I’ll give it that, but I was sorely disappointed by it. It was definitely more in the vein of a [a:V.C. Andrews|1353301|V.C. Andrews|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1413410493p2/1353301.jpg] novel where the thrill of perverseness pretty much is the point. There was no real horror (or much real drama) though there is murder. Although, the incest carried out via a transparent anatomy dummy surrogate was deliciously whacked-out. The only high point in the book in my opinion. It did move along fairly quickly but then again there’s not much here, the story is very spare and the characters are very thin though given some background and a modicum of personality. It’s all from the view of the brother and thus this choice pretty much locks the author into a story mode that just does not allow for rich character-building. The only possible "twist" wasn't really a twist as the text gave that away really early on in my opinion. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be, but at least that would've added a little something else to this. I would’ve loved to have the Vietnam vet boyfriend have to work through his trauma with the sister, at least one scene of this to let the book get a real hook into me.
Overall, this is less a horror novel than a very simple V.C. Andrews-style American gothic story with a pretty perverse angle. I don’t think I would recommend this to anyone per se, just read the paragraph in Paperbacks from Hell and some of the reviews here to get the whole gist of the thing. However, I’ll give it two stars due to the ease of the read and the perverseness on display here. Note apparently the author Andrew Neiderman ghost wrote for V.C. Andrews after her death, so there’s that. I should’ve listened to my mother.
… (altro)