A review by firstimpressionsreviews
The Cellar by Minette Walters

3.0

The beginning of Minette Walters’ novel, The Cellar, is all-consuming with a child’s disappearance, opening a Pandora’s Box of sorts.

Her captures, Ebuka and Metunde, known as Master and Princess to Muna are hard, bitter, and down right mean throughout the book’s entirety. It is very hard to shake. Although, as the plot progresses, despite getting his just desserts I began to feel sympathy for Ebuka and his new-found sorry state of circumstance.

At first, I felt sorry for Muna, trapped, beaten, raped and enslaved, but slowly, as the chapters turned so did my alliance with the girl. Muna, who comes off as poor and helpless at first, slowly starts to strip from this persona and changes into her evil ways. I soon began to breathe harder and jumped at the slightest creak, and like taking a shower after Psycho feared the basement stairs.

Walters’ writing was descriptive and cold with a calculated, psychological plot with eloquent pacing that gave me time to adjust to the dark.

Like the pan-out ending of The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Cellar is eerie and leaves the reader chilled, knowing that Muna’s task for justice is not yet complete.