This has all the grace and subtlety of a feature length Daily Mail article. The reader is presented with two people who have inflicted the most awful crime on their own child, we're told and retold about the crime in gruesome detail. Vox pops from friends and family (indicated by sweepingly stereotypical regional dialects) provide only the barest level of understanding of why the two committed the crime - they had troubled childhoods, big surprise. These sorts of crimes are tragic and disturbing when they actually occur in reality, to make one up for amusement without insight is gratuitous at best. Plus if the above wasn't bad enough there's also a fairly graphic child rape scene - linked to the plot by the barest sliver of necessity. The premise of a couple so in love that they couldn't love their own child was chilling and compelling. I wanted the author to explore this and explain how it was possible that people who had the capacity to love so deeply could commit the vile crime of killing their own child.The explanations given for why Brendan and Sherilyn ultimately decided to leave their own child to starve to death in a cage were vastly inadequate. Why would they not see the birth of a child as the ultimate culmination of their love or as a possibility for redemption from their pasts? Notwithstanding, why would they hand themselves in to the authorities and face being separated if their love and being together was all that mattered? The sudden twist that they seemed to be telepathically connected was just bizarre.Plot holes aside, I also felt that the book should have given a voice to Samantha (the couple's child). Almost every character comes across as vacuous; they all discuss Brendan and Sherilyn at length, but the notion that Samantha's life was important is only given fleeting thought. The characters are more concerned with how they felt, rather than this horrific loss of young life. In the notes at the end of the book, the author is almost apologetic for not giving Samantha any platform, which makes me wonder why she did not rectify this.In better hands, this book could have been a disturbing psychological thriller addressing a serious issue in a hitherto unexplored manner; rather it turned out that a heinous crime was used as the catalyst for a salacious throwaway romance story.
What do You think about Iubire Monstruoasa (2010)?
perverse and perversely romantic. Both sickening and fascinating at the same time
—dgigi8
not really my thing but needs must when you run out of books!
—Dom
Gripping story, but I was very disappointed with the ending.
—Amanda
