Author: Samantha Kolesnik
Year Published: 2020
Plot: Suzy and her brother, Lim, live with their abusive mother in a town where the stars don’t shine at night. Once the abuse becomes too much to handle, the two siblings embark on a sordid cross-country murder spee. As the murder tally rises, Suzy’s mental state spirals into irredeemable madness.
My Review and Thoughts:
Gritty, intense, monstrous. Brutally focused and emotionally draining. A tale told of darkened humanity. A darkness of human depravity. A locked in juggernaut of written clarity, in that, it not only plays with the senses, but also rapes the mind.
Child abuse at the hands of a parent is always a brutal smack in the face, I personally was an abused child so this book all the more played with my mind. This book displays cringe worthy, I need to take a bath to wash away the grime this story bleeds. Unapologetic in its frankness.
When you start a book and that book hits you hard in the emotions and lingers deep and dark inside you, you know your reading something very different, very fresh, very original. There is a sense of personal demons playing like children at a playground of destruction and mayhem. That’s what this story is, a destruction of childhood. A destruction of innocents. There is not swings, or slides or puppy dogs. There is blood, incest and death.
True Crime is a book that scars you. It's a book that repeats itself repeatedly inside your thoughts as each page is turned. You the reader cannot, un-vision, what has been envisioned on the pages of this book. Not only do you envision it unfolding, but it's so raw that you taste it and feel it and that is what makes this book pure with sickening depravity. And that is what makes this book brilliant. It does not sugar coat. It does not pull away, but instead bombards you with clarity. Clarity of pain. Clarity of a disturbing nature. A clarity of sickness of the soul.
Behold with this book the darkness, darkness that is the truth of humanity. Or should I say what humanity. Kolesnik gives you no purpose of peace, happiness or that Hollywood story that so many writers tend to showcase. She supplies no happy endings. You are flooded with her imaginative darkness. She is not afraid to enter the recesses of the human mind, clouded with all its darkness. She digs deep into the mind of phycological brutality. But Kolesnik gives you insanity, but what makes insanity, what makes a person the way they are, Kolesnik shares the darkness of peoples pain, your main characters are created into a mold of choices supplied to them by the actions of the ones that are supposed to love, cherish, care, but in this tale, there is no love, no care, no one to cherish. The only thing to cherish is the pain. The only thing to feel and to know is the outcome of nightmares.
This is a book that will linger with you long and deep and haunt your nightmares in tingling fashion. It will tip toe over your thinking. It will make you see it, envision it, and most horribly and tragically become a part of it. That is what makes a brilliant writer. A writer that possesses you and never lets you go, and that is what Kolesnik has accomplished with True Crime.
I couldn't read this book in one setting. Such a horrifying mind screw. You can't help it, but you have to put it down in moments. Yes, there is the horrible realities such as the murders and child abuse, but it's the simple things that are even more frightening. The thoughts of your narrator. And the one spot that got me so vivid, the deformed pig show. The dark and silent rage of the character Lim. The whole story is a boiling point. A bleak, depressing showcase of humanity at its animalistic core.
Simply put, to sum it up, priceless writing. This is a debut and I cannot believe that this author is not a veteran of written word. This book is a modern gem of storytelling.
Would I Return to it Again: Absolutely? This is one of those books that linger. That takes a hold of you and demands for you to return to it again somewhere down the lane of time.
Would I Recommend: In a heartbeat, but it comes with a warning. This book is violent and filled with imagery that stains your thoughts, but that is what makes this book a priceless example of what writing is all about, making you remember.
My Rating: 5 out of 5
Four Final Words: Darkness, at its Brightest.