❦ Welcome To My Little Gallery ❦

I started reading this book this morning and finished it in about four hours. Now I know this opinion may be unpopular but I did not enjoy this book. Now, before you grab your torches and pitchforks I want you to hear me out. I really really wanted to like this book. I went in with VERY high expectations and honestly, the reason I did not like this book may be the fault of my own mind hyping it up too much. I had heard many rave reviews about it and I had multiple friends tell me how messed up it was so when I saw it on the bestsellers shelf at Books-A-Million, I just had to pick it up. Okay enough of the rambling, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of this review.

1.) THE CHARACTERS

This section is probably going to be the boring part of the review so I’ll just get it over with now. Lowen doesn’t really have much of a personality. I was very interested to learn about her odd past with sleepwalking and her strained relationship with her mother seemed to be a nice sturdy base for building the rest of her character, but she doesn’t really have anything other than that. She falls for Jeremy and is very introverted but I don’t know any other ways to describe her. 

Jeremy is probably the dictionary definition of the “perfect man”. He is handsome, hardworking, a dedicated husband, and a loving father. Who could ever want more? I will admit that I found myself smiling a few times while reading Jeremy’s interactions with his son, Crew, but I’ve always been a sucker for guys who are good with kids. He doesn’t really get a personality other than being a grieving man who loves his kids. Don’t get me wrong, those are perfectly fine traits to give a character, but I wanted to go deeper into his psyche. I wanted to know some of his likes, dislikes, and hobbies. Sadly, we don’t get to see that in this book. I don’t feel the need to write a whole paragraph about Crew, but I will say that he’s a  really cute kid. I feel so awful for the tremendous losses he goes through at such a young age. Last but not least, Verity.

There’s a lot to talk about here but I’ll try to keep it as brief as I possibly can. Verity’s manuscript was by far the most interesting part of this novel. I found myself getting slightly bored with Lowen’s narrations only to have myself perk up at the sudden font change in the chapter titles that signified it was yet another section of Verity’s manuscript. Although her manuscript showed her true psychopathic colors, I found myself morbidly wanting more of her twisted writings. They were what made the book interesting, and I wanted to continue with the dark tone. Verity has the most characterization in this book by far. She was my favorite character in this book. Now, that doesn’t mean that she was a good person, if anything she’s probably the closest thing to Satan’s Hellspawn that exists, I’m just saying that she was entertaining to read about and I was intrigued by her. Okay now onto the fact that

2.) THIS IS JUST FIFTY SHADES OF MURDER

And I truly mean it when I say that. The sheer amount of porn in this book is... way more than it needs to be. Full disclosure, this is the first non-YA book that I've read that wasn't for school so explicit porn was slightly jarring to read but I didn't mind it at first. There was an explicit sex scene in Verity's manuscript and I was like, "oh, we're doing this now? I mean I didn't expect this but sure this is fine." and then the next sex scene came and then the next one and the next one and the next one and geez this book is just porn with a side of attempted (and eventually successful) child murder. Seriously, if you cut out the porn the book would be 50% shorter. Again, it wasn't bad initially, but it was just so repetitive.

And for what? For why? It doesn't add anything to the plot. It doesn't mean anything to me. I do not care about the sex lives of these people. I came here for a heart-pounding thriller that would make me sleep with the lights on. Instead, I received weird mindless sex scenes that were used to fix relationship problems. SEX DOES NOT FIX PROBLEMS. Also the "romance" between Lowen and Jeremy happened so fast with no chemistry and no buildup and no nothing and geez I really did not feel anything for these characters. Pornhub is free, this book was $14.99. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

3.) ARE WE GONNA IGNORE THE WEIRD ABLEISM

I initially didn't know how to feel about this but after watching a youtube review, (the video was by myonna reads so shoutout to her and please go watch her review !) I found myself agreeing 100% with her point on this. Why did Harper's Asperger's make Verity view her as an emotionless monster?? She was literally a toddler I don't understand. As a soon-to-be special education major, I'm gonna get heated if I talk about this for too long so I'm gonna let it rest for now.

4.) DID ANYONE REALLY CRY READING THIS

I don't know what else to title this section. I've read so many reviews of people saying that they cried and were severely disturbed and slept with the lights on. I... did not feel any of that. I read this book in one day as I do with most of the books I read so I'm not sure if I couldn't put it down because it was good or if my need to finish everything I start took over but in any case I did not feel many emotions while reading this. I just want to say that child death and child murder is horrendous and despicable and evil and every bad thing in this world.

That being said, I really didn't feel disturbed by this. Were Verity's actions in her manuscript evil? Oh absolutely. Did I feel physically sick to my stomach while reading this? No. This wasn't a thriller, this was the lovechild of a Lifetime movie script and an episode of Criminal Minds. This book is not a mindfuck, it's predictable and child murder happens just for the fun of it. Finally, this brings me to

5.) THE ENDING

So.. the manuscript was fake? Nah, not buying it.

1. Why would Jeremy try to stop Lowen from killing Verity if he already tried to kill her ?

2. How could Verity fake brain scans that Jeremy said could not be faked ?

3. I can't imagine how Verity was able to fake a vegetative state in front of multiple doctors and nurses

4. Why would Verity not write "to preface, this is all a work of fiction from a villain's perspective" in her manuscript ? If the manuscript really was fake, it holds incriminating evidence.

5. Who in the FUCK would write themselves murdering/abusing their own children if it wasn't real?????????

6. You were just writing that letter to cover your ass, Verity.