Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Evil

I find it so hard to do reviews for books with such triggering content, but I will give it a try.

The Girl Next Door is loosely based on an actual event where a woman and her children, even the neighbor kids at times, tortured and raped a young girl until she died. There are some pretty graphic scenes and a lot of cringeworthy scenes so definitely NOT for the faint hearted.

The Girl Next Door does a great job on showing that monsters can be very much human and the lengths that people can and will go to hurt others. The book is definitely heartbreaking and brought me to tears.

Of course, the majority of the characters in this novel are horrible so I can't say that I really loved any of the characters except for Meg and Susan. I do love how Meg continues to be so strong and fight so hard through this horrible experience. I also love the devotion of Meg to her sister Susan, and it was the one shining light through the whole novel.

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ten_telegrams's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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meaghanelizabook's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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kimanhktran's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Very dark read, not a book for most. However the authors writing was amazing and detailed. Disturbingly detailed. Again not a book for most! It started off slow but after part one you cannot stop reading, unless of course if you are disturbed by the unfortunate events that happen in the story. I have not read a book in so long but tiktok recommended it to be and I could not stop reading, finished in about a week. I would recommend it if horror is your thing and if you don’t easily get disturbed. I will definitely check out the author more, his writing style is phenomenal.

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kb13's review against another edition

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I'm not sure where to start. Obviously I knew this was a violent book but I could not stomach the ways in which the author tried to give the narrator some sort of moral ambivolence and the ending message of

that really you are judged by your last action not all of the ways you were complicit in horrible things before that was ridiculous to me.

. Perhaps it felt more upsetting because I was listening to it on an audio book but I really wouldn't reccomend this book at all. If you're at all interested in this case I'm sure there are podcasts you can listen to that would give you all the info without the attempted moral ambiguity.

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caidyn's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This book was one of those Halloween books that you crave during the fall season. And it met more expectations than I expected it to.

It begins with a man, David, looking back on his life and on one particular summer that changed his whole life. I didn't like the way it was done; I felt that the beginning portion was unneeded and that the author should have just jumped head first into the story. Yes, it was nice to be able to draw parallels from the present to make the past, where the story lies, more deep.

David is one of those easy manipulated people, really just goes along with the crowd. And he remains that way, with the help of Ruth, for most of the story. Ruth is the true antagonist, the one driving David's conflict of either telling about what is happening to this poor girl, Meg, or forget about it and just watch. He's not active in any of the torture but I do think that he would have been if he hadn't had created a bond with Meg in the beginning.

One thing I loved about this book was how real it felt. The torture displayed in this book has happened before and will happen again. Fear can force people down and lift people up, as seen with the boys and Ruth, the overwhelming evil of the story. She seems normal, drawing the boys in and showing that she can be their friend. Then she flips the tables, still showing how friendly she can be with them but warping it with the treatment she shows to be okay towards one person.

Ruth really reminded me of Hitler. I'm reading Elie Wiesel's Night in school currently so I guess I'm drawing from that. But going on. Hitler showed that it was alright to treat the Jews the way that he did and then, when his little servants had seen that it was okay and taken notes on what to do, he turned them loose, and they committed the true atrocities while he just sat back and let it happen.

The ending was great. With David killing Ruth, the unwilling accomplice turning against the leader, it marked a huge change for his character that had been starting since he tried to help Meg escape. And the part I liked the most of the ending was with Woofer and how he had been impacted, drawing in David's life experiences with what we were given of that summer and with his wives, and how someone else took what happened and what he had seen made the book really remarkable and well rounded.

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