A review by bestdressedbookworm
Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee by Mary G. Thompson
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- 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
2.5
It’s hard to give such a traumatic, raw and horrific story such an average rating. Though this started really well and had great pacing that soon started to dwindle and I felt like I was going around in circles with a little bit more information being released each time.
In this story we follow Amy/Chelsea who has returned after being kidnapped for over 6 years. But her Cousin Dee/Stacie had not returned with her. In those 6 years the girls went through a lot, they were renamed by their captor, and some other stuff that I won’t spoil. Amy struggles to tell everyone what had happened, if Dee is still alive and at first I understood the trauma of reliving it, and as we find out more and more her silence makes sense.
However Amy goes back and forth in consciousness and memory a lot and it often becomes confusing as to what we are learning about. She is almost an unreliable narrator in some ways as she is manipulating the way she lets little bits of information slip. Although this has a happy-ish ending, some of it started to get a little far fetched if not even silly and a book that gripped me so much at the start did not hold my interest until the end. If you have read this you know those last 50 pages are all over the place with nonsensical behaviour.
In this story we follow Amy/Chelsea who has returned after being kidnapped for over 6 years. But her Cousin Dee/Stacie had not returned with her. In those 6 years the girls went through a lot, they were renamed by their captor, and some other stuff that I won’t spoil. Amy struggles to tell everyone what had happened, if Dee is still alive and at first I understood the trauma of reliving it, and as we find out more and more her silence makes sense.
However Amy goes back and forth in consciousness and memory a lot and it often becomes confusing as to what we are learning about. She is almost an unreliable narrator in some ways as she is manipulating the way she lets little bits of information slip. Although this has a happy-ish ending, some of it started to get a little far fetched if not even silly and a book that gripped me so much at the start did not hold my interest until the end. If you have read this you know those last 50 pages are all over the place with nonsensical behaviour.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Kidnapping, Pedophilia, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, and Emotional abuse