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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
I must say, wow. This is a very well written psychological thriller. I enjoyed the characters and felt connected to them, even if I wasn't a fan of them. This book reminds me of something that would be on the show Criminal Minds, but without the heavy police part and was more about the victims and perpetrator. This is a must read, and I'm definitely interested to read the next novel!
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
3.5 ⭐️
Before I begin my review I’ll get some trigger warnings out of the way first: kidnapping, child abuse, bullying, murder, torture, gore, mental illness, alcoholism, suicide.
Although I have a lot of thoughts on this book I’m finding it hard to put into words without spoiling one of the major plot twists (which I’d actually managed to work out half way through in any case - go me!) so I’ll instead try to keep it short and spoiler free.
The premise for this book was super promising. The main protagonist is a 14 year old girl Angel, who is kidnapped along with her twin brother Bud. They find themselves trapped in a ‘Dollhouse’ with absolutely no way out. They are trapped alongside Olivia who has been there for a year already. Together they are forced to be living dolls, filmed and photographed acting out various memories of their captor Alfred’s life in order to ‘fix’ them. It becomes clear that Alfred is fixated on his hatred of his family, particularly his older sister Felicity and more often than not the recreations do not go as he wants and the children pay the price. The result is a story which is dark, twisted and horrifying in places with the children doing all they can to survive whilst looking for ways to escape.
The issues I had with this book were mainly around the fact that the children seemed a lot younger than they are written, I had to keep reminding myself that they were young teenagers. There were several situations where the kids responses or actions didn’t seem realistic - some of the torture and abuse they endured was truly horrific and it barely seemed to register at times, when it should have probably psychologically wrecked them. There was also the fact that we are supposed to believe that a professional caregiver would allow a 4 year old child to be taken without ever speaking to or seeing who was taking her, with zero questions asked and simply accepting that it was a relative. There’s just no way your spidey sense wouldn’t be tingling, especially if you’d just had to put out a purposely lit fire and you’d had a confirmed strange man in your garden unless you were utterly stupid or negligent.
My other HUGE bugbear is one I can’t really go into without ruining one of the important twists of the book. All I’ll say is that the portrayal is inaccurate and could be construed as deeply offensive by certain people. I do wonder how much research the author did on the topic, because usually this isn’t how ‘it’ works.
All in all this is a good if disturbing, psychological page turner. It’s a little slow to start but starts to pick up fairly quickly. If you enjoy a twisted tale, this book is for you.
Huge thank you to BookSirens and the author Sarah Ennis for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC for free in return for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Before I begin my review I’ll get some trigger warnings out of the way first: kidnapping, child abuse, bullying, murder, torture, gore, mental illness, alcoholism, suicide.
Although I have a lot of thoughts on this book I’m finding it hard to put into words without spoiling one of the major plot twists (which I’d actually managed to work out half way through in any case - go me!) so I’ll instead try to keep it short and spoiler free.
The premise for this book was super promising. The main protagonist is a 14 year old girl Angel, who is kidnapped along with her twin brother Bud. They find themselves trapped in a ‘Dollhouse’ with absolutely no way out. They are trapped alongside Olivia who has been there for a year already. Together they are forced to be living dolls, filmed and photographed acting out various memories of their captor Alfred’s life in order to ‘fix’ them. It becomes clear that Alfred is fixated on his hatred of his family, particularly his older sister Felicity and more often than not the recreations do not go as he wants and the children pay the price. The result is a story which is dark, twisted and horrifying in places with the children doing all they can to survive whilst looking for ways to escape.
The issues I had with this book were mainly around the fact that the children seemed a lot younger than they are written, I had to keep reminding myself that they were young teenagers. There were several situations where the kids responses or actions didn’t seem realistic - some of the torture and abuse they endured was truly horrific and it barely seemed to register at times, when it should have probably psychologically wrecked them. There was also the fact that we are supposed to believe that a professional caregiver would allow a 4 year old child to be taken without ever speaking to or seeing who was taking her, with zero questions asked and simply accepting that it was a relative. There’s just no way your spidey sense wouldn’t be tingling, especially if you’d just had to put out a purposely lit fire and you’d had a confirmed strange man in your garden unless you were utterly stupid or negligent.
My other HUGE bugbear is one I can’t really go into without ruining one of the important twists of the book. All I’ll say is that the portrayal is inaccurate and could be construed as deeply offensive by certain people. I do wonder how much research the author did on the topic, because usually this isn’t how ‘it’ works.
All in all this is a good if disturbing, psychological page turner. It’s a little slow to start but starts to pick up fairly quickly. If you enjoy a twisted tale, this book is for you.
Huge thank you to BookSirens and the author Sarah Ennis for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC for free in return for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
You can find this review and all my others over at www.readbookrepeat.wordpress.com
I received a copy of this book via Booksirens, in exchange for an honest review.
Actual rating of 3.5
When Peter's daughter, Olivia, was kidnapped over a year ago, he left his illustrious career as a journalist in order to devote all his time to finding her. Now, he spends his days and his fortune helping other parents who's children have gone missing, still holding out hope that one day he will find his own daughter, alive and well.
Twins Angel and Bud have grown up learning how to make do. They fend for themselves most of the time, and this weekend is no different. With their father in prison and their mother skipping out with a friend for a few days, they're looking forward to having the trailer to themselves. Until they're kidnapped and awaken to find themselves in a strange room, soon they learn that they're in the Dollhouse, and they are no longer fourteen year old twins, they're now Boy Doll and Girl doll. Finding themselves in this bizarre situation hasn't dimmed their hope that they will eventually escape and find themselves free of this nightmare.
All of this is orchestrated by Alfred. Alfred has an insatiable need to right the wrongs from his past, and he needs living dolls to do so. Re-creating old photos helps to do this. The thing is...once the photo album has been fully re-created, what will happen to the Dolls?
I came across this one while browsing Booksiren's catalogue and the cover caught my eye, quickly followed by the synopsis. This came across as something slightly more unique in the thriller/suspense/crime genre and I was keen to give it a go. I nearly requested all three books at the same time, and I'm really glad that I didn't because I never would have gotten them read in time. That's not to say that this story was bad, just that there was a very slow, building pacing to the book that I feel was intentional in order to build that sure fire feeling of suspense and dread. At times though, the story did lag a bit and sometimes things felt a little repetitive, but again, I almost feel like this was intentional as I could feel the ticking down of the clock on the possibility that some or all of these Dolls would make it out alive.
The story is told through alternating POVs. Mostly from Angel, one of the twins who finds themselves a new inhabitant of Alfred's dollhouse. The others are from Peter Baden, the father of Olivia, another missing teenager, and a few scattered chapters from Jennifer (Alfred's accomplice), Edward (a guidance counselor at a school), and I think maybe one of two from Alfred himself. I was most interested in Angel's POV for obvious reasons, this is where the story is happening, where Peter's POV was more about the frantic drive to find the missing children, while also engaging in a fashion, it just didn't interest me as much, though I do feel that it helped to add a layer of suspense because I was so desperate to get back to the Dollhouse and see what crazy thing was happening now. I didn't entirely understand the point of Edward's POV, but as the story progresses it soon made sense as to how it all ties in together. As said above, the pacing is slow, but it feels intentional and I guess in a way, it did kind of work for the story. My anticipation was ramping up as I got closer to the end because I just didn't know how things were going to go, and once the reveals started happening and things started moving, they really picked up and just flew. Though even through this higher paced part of the story, things still moved a bit too slow for my building anxiety, whether this is a stroke of genius or detriment though, I'm still not sure.
The characters were written well enough, and I found Alfred to be terrifying in his insanity. The feeling of unpredictability that his character had was so well defined and shown that I really felt a small level of anxiety whenever he got page time because you just did not know what he was going to do. This was incredibly well done and worked so well for the story as it can be difficult to write a truly fear inducing character. Angel and Bud were written well enough, but at times Angel felt rather two dimensional and a little flat. Peter was a good addition to the cast and I think it was a good idea to show the story from both sides - the kidnapped, and the searching. The other characters we encountered were okay, but nothing to write home about.
The events that happen in the Dollhouse, at times, were shocking in their execution, and this is where I will put some trigger warnings - Abduction, Child Abduction, Child Abuse, Child Torture, Graphic Violence of a sort. Most of the time there wasn't a whole lot happening other than some humiliation or the teenagers being forced into situations that were, while not quite abusive, still incredibly uncomfortable and at times confronting. I like that Ennis did not shy away from the horrors that are possible with the kidnapping of minors and while she didn't glorify it, she still made it seem real and believable to a point.
I don't want to go into too much detail with anything because I feel like this is a story better read with only what the synopsis gives you. It did end up being different from anything else that I've read in these genres and I did enjoy it even if it did feel like it took me a bit to get through. I'm definitely planning on continuing with the series because I'm curious to see what happens and where the story might lead. This story is concluded by the end of this book, so there's not really any cliffhangers so to speak, but I believe the story does follow one (possibly more) of the characters after these events.
I received a copy of this book via Booksirens, in exchange for an honest review.
Actual rating of 3.5
When Peter's daughter, Olivia, was kidnapped over a year ago, he left his illustrious career as a journalist in order to devote all his time to finding her. Now, he spends his days and his fortune helping other parents who's children have gone missing, still holding out hope that one day he will find his own daughter, alive and well.
Twins Angel and Bud have grown up learning how to make do. They fend for themselves most of the time, and this weekend is no different. With their father in prison and their mother skipping out with a friend for a few days, they're looking forward to having the trailer to themselves. Until they're kidnapped and awaken to find themselves in a strange room, soon they learn that they're in the Dollhouse, and they are no longer fourteen year old twins, they're now Boy Doll and Girl doll. Finding themselves in this bizarre situation hasn't dimmed their hope that they will eventually escape and find themselves free of this nightmare.
All of this is orchestrated by Alfred. Alfred has an insatiable need to right the wrongs from his past, and he needs living dolls to do so. Re-creating old photos helps to do this. The thing is...once the photo album has been fully re-created, what will happen to the Dolls?
I came across this one while browsing Booksiren's catalogue and the cover caught my eye, quickly followed by the synopsis. This came across as something slightly more unique in the thriller/suspense/crime genre and I was keen to give it a go. I nearly requested all three books at the same time, and I'm really glad that I didn't because I never would have gotten them read in time. That's not to say that this story was bad, just that there was a very slow, building pacing to the book that I feel was intentional in order to build that sure fire feeling of suspense and dread. At times though, the story did lag a bit and sometimes things felt a little repetitive, but again, I almost feel like this was intentional as I could feel the ticking down of the clock on the possibility that some or all of these Dolls would make it out alive.
The story is told through alternating POVs. Mostly from Angel, one of the twins who finds themselves a new inhabitant of Alfred's dollhouse. The others are from Peter Baden, the father of Olivia, another missing teenager, and a few scattered chapters from Jennifer (Alfred's accomplice), Edward (a guidance counselor at a school), and I think maybe one of two from Alfred himself. I was most interested in Angel's POV for obvious reasons, this is where the story is happening, where Peter's POV was more about the frantic drive to find the missing children, while also engaging in a fashion, it just didn't interest me as much, though I do feel that it helped to add a layer of suspense because I was so desperate to get back to the Dollhouse and see what crazy thing was happening now. I didn't entirely understand the point of Edward's POV, but as the story progresses it soon made sense as to how it all ties in together. As said above, the pacing is slow, but it feels intentional and I guess in a way, it did kind of work for the story. My anticipation was ramping up as I got closer to the end because I just didn't know how things were going to go, and once the reveals started happening and things started moving, they really picked up and just flew. Though even through this higher paced part of the story, things still moved a bit too slow for my building anxiety, whether this is a stroke of genius or detriment though, I'm still not sure.
The characters were written well enough, and I found Alfred to be terrifying in his insanity. The feeling of unpredictability that his character had was so well defined and shown that I really felt a small level of anxiety whenever he got page time because you just did not know what he was going to do. This was incredibly well done and worked so well for the story as it can be difficult to write a truly fear inducing character. Angel and Bud were written well enough, but at times Angel felt rather two dimensional and a little flat. Peter was a good addition to the cast and I think it was a good idea to show the story from both sides - the kidnapped, and the searching. The other characters we encountered were okay, but nothing to write home about.
The events that happen in the Dollhouse, at times, were shocking in their execution, and this is where I will put some trigger warnings - Abduction, Child Abduction, Child Abuse, Child Torture, Graphic Violence of a sort. Most of the time there wasn't a whole lot happening other than some humiliation or the teenagers being forced into situations that were, while not quite abusive, still incredibly uncomfortable and at times confronting. I like that Ennis did not shy away from the horrors that are possible with the kidnapping of minors and while she didn't glorify it, she still made it seem real and believable to a point.
I don't want to go into too much detail with anything because I feel like this is a story better read with only what the synopsis gives you. It did end up being different from anything else that I've read in these genres and I did enjoy it even if it did feel like it took me a bit to get through. I'm definitely planning on continuing with the series because I'm curious to see what happens and where the story might lead. This story is concluded by the end of this book, so there's not really any cliffhangers so to speak, but I believe the story does follow one (possibly more) of the characters after these events.
This is my first book from Sara and it was so so good, I took me on a roller coaster ride of emotions . It pulled at my heart strings it got me angry enough to rant and rave in places and made my heart hurt in other places for what those children were subjected to.
This is my first book from Sara and it was so so good, I took me on a roller coaster ride of emotions . It pulled at my heart strings it got me angry enough to rant and rave in places and made my heart hurt in other places for what those children were subjected to.
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
That was kind of mediocre, the concept of the book should've given the author a big opportunity to write some disturbing book, but because of the writing it was kind of lame and staged, the problem with psychological thrillers is if the book can't make you believe what is happening and let you feel hooked, it just turns into a big chore to complete it.
You could tell the author didn't really search beforehand about the mental illness that was supposedly portrayed in the book, so that was an issue,too.
The characters weren't ones you could really feel attached to, also, they were written from the third person perspective, which was a shame because that didn't give more layers to the book.
The ending wasn't that spectacular, but it was expected, so i didn't dwell on that much.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange of an honest review via netgalley and the publisher*
You could tell the author didn't really search beforehand about the mental illness that was supposedly portrayed in the book, so that was an issue,too.
The characters weren't ones you could really feel attached to, also, they were written from the third person perspective, which was a shame because that didn't give more layers to the book.
The ending wasn't that spectacular, but it was expected, so i didn't dwell on that much.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange of an honest review via netgalley and the publisher*
Wow this book was intense! It was emotional, suspenseful and disturbing. Definitely not for those with a weak stomach and the child abuse in it was difficult to read but overall it was a crazy story. Need to read a happy book after that but then I'll be back for the next book in this series!
It used to feel like knowing things should make them less scary, but now she wasn’t so sure.
The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.
Accept and move on, no grudges or resentments held.
It was probably easier to be nice when the other person was worse off than you.
You can’t always get what you want.
Treat your money with respect and it will grow for you.
You don’t have to be mean to be successful.
Monsters beget future monsters.
Money does sometimes motivate people to turn in friends and family.
How is it that 24 hours can feel like such a long time, but also feel like it’s flying by, all at once.
Whatever had people done before the Internet?
Serial killer trilogy: wetting the bed, abusing animals, fire starting.
I LOVE THIS BOOK!
A long and very satisfying read. Not the typical, cliche story you’ve read before. If you want a happy ever after ending with no flaws, don’t read this book.
I never expected the plot twist. The scenes described almost made me feel like i was watching it first hand. Gruesome, eerie and inhumane act. Definitely not what you wish upon anybody.
I am so devastated by what happened in the story. Heart-broken as if it is a true, real story.
I am glad to hear that the sequel will be released soon. Hope to read more sequels in the future.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.
Accept and move on, no grudges or resentments held.
It was probably easier to be nice when the other person was worse off than you.
You can’t always get what you want.
Treat your money with respect and it will grow for you.
You don’t have to be mean to be successful.
Monsters beget future monsters.
Money does sometimes motivate people to turn in friends and family.
How is it that 24 hours can feel like such a long time, but also feel like it’s flying by, all at once.
Whatever had people done before the Internet?
Serial killer trilogy: wetting the bed, abusing animals, fire starting.
I LOVE THIS BOOK!
A long and very satisfying read. Not the typical, cliche story you’ve read before. If you want a happy ever after ending with no flaws, don’t read this book.
I never expected the plot twist. The scenes described almost made me feel like i was watching it first hand. Gruesome, eerie and inhumane act. Definitely not what you wish upon anybody.
I am so devastated by what happened in the story. Heart-broken as if it is a true, real story.
I am glad to hear that the sequel will be released soon. Hope to read more sequels in the future.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.