Along the Path of Torment by Chandler Morrison REVIEW

Summary:

Ty Seward is a sick man. Anorexic, sexually aberrant, and haunted by a ghostly apparition residing in his closet. Living in the shadow of an in-remission cancer he fully expects to return, Ty bitterly earns his meager living by working as an assistant to his uncle, a business-and-media mogul who runs a lucrative child prostitution ring catering to the Hollywood elite. When Ty's line of work introduces him to a precocious teenage girl who seems to possess a shrewdly keen insight into his inner machinations, he is forced to confront his hidden demons and repressed trauma, embarking on a bleak and harrowing odyssey of self-discovery in the decomposing City of Angels.

My Thoughts:

One of the reasons why I love Chandler Morrison's works is his willingness to write sick and twisted characters that are generally taboo for other writers. Ty is a bad person, and Morrison doesn't mask that or try to get the reader to sympathize with him. He is just horrible, period.

Ty is complacent toward the horrors that his uncle inflicts upon minors, as he used to do the same. Now he doesn't do everything he used to, but he still does things with underage girls. The further in the book, the more we learn about Ty's childhood trauma and how the ghost is a reflection of it. When Ty was a child, he was sexually abused by his aunt and uncle, but those memories only surface when he confronts the ghost in the yellow dress. This is more of an explanation of why he did it, not an excuse.

Beatrice/Dolly is the teenager he meets while working for his uncle. She is kind towards Ty, and they slowly become friends. She is, to me, a representation of what a lot of child stars had to go through to get fame. Beatrice doesn't really want to be a star, it is her mother who pushes her to do it and is okay with her daughter being assaulted by older men in order for Beatrice to be casted as an actress.

This is a bleak novel that includes heavily realistic content about the entertainment industry. So if that is something you can't handle, skip this book. Otherwise, I would recommend it. It is not for everyone though.

My Rating: 4 stars

The Girl by Victory Witherkeigh REVIEW

 Summary:

The parents knew it had been a mistake to have a girl. At birth, the girl's long, elegant fingers wriggled and grasped forward, motioning to strangle the very air from her mother's lungs. As she grew older, she grew more like her father, whose ancestors would dream of those soon to die. She walked and talked in her sleep, and her parents warded themselves, telling the girl that she was evil, unlovable, their burden to bear only until her eighteenth birthday released them.

The average person on the streets of Los Angeles would look at the girl and see a young woman with dark chocolate eyes, curly long hair, and the tanned skin of her Filipina heritage. Her teachers praised her scholarly achievements and extracurricular activities, from academic decathlon to cheer.

The girl knew she was different, especially as she grew to accept that the other children's parents didn't despise them. Her parents whispered about their pact as odd and disturbing occurrences continued to happen around her. The girl thought being an evil demon should require the skies to bleed, the ground to tremble, an animal sacrifice to seal the bargain, or at least cause some general mayhem. Did other demons work so hard to find friends, do well on their homework, and protect their spoiled younger brother?

The demon was patient. It could afford to wait, to remind the girl when she was hurt that power was hers to take. She needed only to embrace it. It could wait. The girl's parents were doing much of its work already.

My Thoughts:

I fell in LOVE with this book. The writing was captivating and beautiful, and I wanted so badly to finish it in one sitting (but I'm a college student, so that didn't happen). 

The girl (whose name is never revealed) have parents who have hated her since she was born, and constantly remind her of it, verbally abusing her at every opportunity (basically, all the time). The novel shows the girl growing up until college age. She constantly wishes that her parents loved her, and that they would give her as much love as they did to her baby brother. The girl ends up trying hard at school, and the teachers praised her, but the reason was she hoped that her parents would acknowledge her as a human being. Of course, this doesn't happen. Her parents neglect her, and so her middle and high school years were a living hell. The girl's love life was awful, because all she wanted was to be seen and loved, making her a target for boys who want to take advantage of her. 

The demon/fantasy element of the novel is very small compared to the girl's normal life. The summary hypes up this element, but spends very little time on it. One ability that is mentioned is the one that the girl can see premonitions of those close to death, but it seems to have forgotten this plot point for most of the book. The demon is also barely in this novel, making me hope that the author will write a sequel.

I loved this read, but I also can't ignore the problem that, for a book that promises a constant presence of a demon, it is so small compared to the rest of the novel. However, since it was so good, I do recommend it. I would warn that the fantasy elements are far and few in between though.

My Rating: 4 stars