The Girl Next Door

Came across this book looking for good horrorlit for the season. I can attest that his book is horrific. Probably the most disturbing, awful, nihilistic novel I’ve read. This book deserves an actual trigger warning and I don’t say that lightly. There is no light here, do not expect to find a happy ending.However, you can only achieve something so grotesque by being excellent at prose, which Jack Ketchum has proven here. The entire novel is set from a child’s perspective and Jack does a magnificent job embodying this 12 year old; his thoughts, experiences, and ultimately his adult outlook on the horrors he is subjected to and, unfortunately, is accomplice to as well.Truly sickening. 5/5 stars I will never read this again and don’t recommend you doing so either.

The Girl Next Door is about a young boy who slowly gets introduced to various terrors committed by people he is well aquatinted with. His neighbors and best friends adopt two young girls after their parents' death. The matriarch of the house, Ruth, slowly allows their marginalization turn into torture. The reader is put into the perspective of the boy who witnesses the atrocities evolve from verbal abuse to unnamable acts. He is forced to answer the all important question: when do I become guilty?This book, though it is devastatingly explicit and shockingly grotesque delves into something deeper than what many might call "B-Movie Horror." There is a duality to it that grabs the reader and makes him or her trudge through sick and depressing plot points.First, there is visceral and acute horror. When you read anything by Ketchum, you are ripped out of your world and thrust into his. It isn't a gentle transition. It isn't like nodding off to sleep and awakening in a dream world. It's like falling down from a ladder and being knocked unconscious into a terrifying nightmare. Even the seemingly banal scenes in the novel have a sense of foreboding and suspense that has you investing in characters you have only known for a few pages. From riding on a Ferris Wheel with an older girl you have a crush on to witnessing torture mere feet away, you are strapped in. Ketchum succeeds in both making you want know what happens next while at the same time shaking you back and forth with each event in the story. The voice of the boy is so pitch perfect and so easy to identify with, you begin to wonder what you would be doing in his situation.Secondly, though it seems chaotic and fast paced, there is a slow burning question that the characters are answering in different ways: when does a man become a monster? Each person who is privy to what happens to the victim of the story crosses the line from innocence into culpability. From the ring leader to the passive bystander, everyone is thrust into a decision point. Ketchum shows us that even the most banal, innocent person can become the psychopath read about in the news. Just under everyone's skin, even the skin of a child, is an evil that is just waiting to be let out. The main characters adolescent mind must come to terms with the fact that as each moment goes by he is slowly transforming into a terribly evil human being and then decide if he is going to do anything about it.An important reminder: Although this book has a potent and ultimately important lesson, it is graphic, sick, depressing and likely to make you feel bad. Be careful with it.

Ketchum's novel should make you squirm with discomfort, not because it is a horror book, but because it is horrifyingly closer to the real side of human brutality than to those fantastical drafted gore fests we sink our teeth into when our tongues require the taste of terror.There is a novel by Luanne Rice called Stone Heart that crept into the hidden realm of Domestic Abuse without the benefit of rose colored glasses, and left me breathless in the wake of such an emotional journey."Girl Next Door" took me through that journey again, but this time the passage was darker and filled with unaccountable dread. "How could this happen?" you will say. "Why didn't anybody DO anything?" The tide of emotion you will feel sweeping over you, washing your pity in tears as salty as the ocean and swirling the intense sadness through your soul, will leave you touched by a profound sense of loss.In the 1950's, life was simple for a group of neighborhood children, living in a close knit, out of the way community. David was a boy back then, when Meg and Susan Loughlin move in next door with Ruth Chandler and her three sons, after the death of their parents in a car accident that left Meg scarred and Susan crippled.David doesn't mind playing with Ruth's boys, and often found Ruth to be quite pleasant, in that she would treat the boys as adults and even allow them beer at times. But Ruth had a legendary temper, well known throughout the neighborhood.David is enchanted by Meg, and therefore hangs around more than ever next door, wanting to be near her. Ruth, unstable before, begins rushing down towards the pits of insanity at a noticeably accelerated pace; and makes the Loughlin girls targets for her anger-infused mania. Descending from verbal abuse, to overworking Meg at chores, to her final psychotic imprisonment of the two innocent girls, Ketchum's painting of Ruth in the colors of derangement and lunacy is vivid and realistically unsettling.Ruth slowly begins to allow others to join her in terrorizing the girls, and though David is mortified at the scenes unfolding right in front of him, he does nothing and tells no one about Ruth's basement until it is too late. I will not divulge any further information, but with the story being told from David's viewpoint, you can feel and understand his hesitation and fear, and remember that he himself was still just a child.In this book, you may find yourself wishing that Ketchum was less skilled in his writings, so that you wouldn't find yourself so drawn into the characters and the appalling scenario. This book will make you angry and sad, leave you feeling helpless in your inability to change the outcome, and that is exactly what you should be feeling. You will not walk away untouched. By far, one of the most riveting and revolting horror books I have ever read, well worth the money you spend.

Excellent book

Loved this book, the content is not for the faint hearted. It will stay on your mind, especially being based on a true story. The author has worked well to capture the darkness behind the story and it is well written. Not too keen on the way amazon have printed it, it feels like a bootleg copy but otherwise, read this book if you enjoy being mildly traumatised.

Great book. Not for the faint of heart

Wandering across the internet looking for something worth reading or watching I stumbled upon this book. Triggered by the countless reviews, none of which was less that amazing, I decided to give it a try. I already knew the story and I was eager to know how the author succeeded in making a novel out if it. I had absolutely no clue what I was about to step into. Honestly, it’s been a living hell. Hardly ever I have experienced something so strong. The story is hunting, disturbing it goes right to your guts and makes you sick. It drags you into a bottomless pit of desperation, anger and hopelessness. Being based on real events this true-crime story really has a completely different taste from everything I’ve ever red before. The more you go through the pages the more you want to know. Knowing becomes a strong addiction, you want to know how far the story goes and how bad it turns. It is so stunningly written that I found myself cringing and flinching. All that pain and suffering those poor girls had to go through while kept captive as well as their tormentors are so vivid that you feel you have to turn your head the other way. It is said that no beast is so fierce but knows some touch of pity, yet everyone who met those girls and took part in her agony felt like having none of it. The story is told by a teenage boy next door, the only character you soon start to have some hope he could do something right, taking into action and turn things around. Someone said this book is not meant for everybody but everybody should read it. It well describes the human wickedness and its banality. As for me it’s almost impossible to not rate this book with anything less of 5 stars.

Me encantooo- debi a leerlo en 4 semanas (un reto mensual- este fue x “Autor con tus iniciales”) había visto en YouTube reseñas muy buenas del autor- lo q leí en 3 semanas fue muy poco la verdad, menos de la mitad, pero faltándome tanto comencé a quedarme si poder parar! Debía saber que estaba ocurriendo con los personajes!!!! 😱 SUPER recomiendo 👍🏻 Horrible sensación de WTF pero así es como sabes que en vdd es una buena historia - y si sucedió!!!