Plot: (Back of Book): Josey Claypool begins the summer before her senior year at a carnival, where a fortune teller with milky-white eyes gives her a foreboding tarot reading. She’s spooked, but nothing could prepare her for the following day when two strange men show up at her front door. Josey is kidnapped at gunpoint and brought to a pink cabin in the woods where she is held prisoner. In her darkest moment, the fortune teller appears and gives her a deck of tarot cards, which she must cast and interpret in a fight for her life. In this work of speculative autofiction, award-winning author EV Knight reclaims the narrative of her own past in an exploration of trauma, agency, and survival.
My Review and Thoughts:
EV Knight has created an inner darkness that literally rapes the pages and forces the mind of the one reading to question and to feel that lingering inner darkness displayed through out this haunting ordeal of human depravity.
This is a story at its starkest and an unexpected escape into a world of non-fiction mixed and served with a fictional realm that layers itself into your subconscious. Its a brutal story, yet a story that needed to be told.
Its a complex story of emotions and devastations of a darker side of human nature. To be honest as a reviewer I did not know if I was going to like this story although the word like, is almost a sin, for this tale is truly sad and brutal and one cannot imply the word like without feeling bad, because the actions, the human monsters display is at times gut wrenching.
The reason why I thought at first I was not going to like it, was I could not figure out the angle the author was going for but as the book progressed it all came into crystal clarity and my book loving mind flowed with ease with the unfolding horrors and actions that EV Knight displayed though a writing prose. She bleed dry imagination in creating a story yet partial fact, which becomes a complete worthy to praise tale.
Escapism revenge tale that truly sends emotional chills through the thinking process of human understanding. This had part true life and part fictional exploration of what if scenarios. A slow burn opening that leads to a darkened middle and a haunting violent conclusion, perfectly executed with a flawless degree of writing genius.
EV Knight created a story that not only is from the heart, but from the very human nightmares that haunt and calculate a pathway of destruction of our normality.
As a survivor of rape myself the story is very deep, dark and eye opening, but the beauty of the revenge like setting, or the reality of survival of real life horrors in the end create a closed door to the nightmare.
This book is inspired by an escape and a conclusion, yet not forgetting the nightmarish monstrosity that rape is.
This is a deep subject matter that many might not be able to adventure into, but it is a story that needs to be read and to focus on human struggle and the human will to fight and to survive no matter how many times someone calls you a victim. The true strength of will is to survive and in this story EV Knight took the reins, the whip, the cracked sidewalk path and created a triumphant escape no matter how devastating the journey was.
A solid read. A vibrant, vivid, shockingly, intense, brilliant novel that truly masters the emotional rollercoaster of humanity's nightmares.
Would I return to it Again: EV Knight has a mastery about her in telling a story. Her stories should be read over and over.
Would I Recommend: Absolutely. For it is a tale that will haunt and also build a personal process of rebuilding oneself.
My Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
Four Final Words: Beautifully designed darkness. Powerful.