Ick

Lucretia and the Kroons by Victor LaValle

Fiction/Horror

The thing that sticks with me most after reading this is--language!  I bought this after I read about it on an adolescent website but there is no way this book should be read by adolescents.  It is wildly inappropriate for young people and maybe any age group.

The main character is a 12 year-old girl and it opens on her birthday party.  Lucretia's best friend Sunny can't come to her party because she is dying from cancer.  Instead, Lucretia's mother invites three other girls who laugh at Lucretia and ruin her birthday.  After the party fiasco, Lucretia arranges a small party with just Sunny.  But, Sunny can't make it.  Here is where the total break with reality occurs.

I'm pretty sure that Sunny died and when Lucretia learned this, she had a psychic break with reality.  But, that's just a guess.  Instead, Lucretia becomes convinced that Sunny has been kidnapped by a trio of monsters called the Kroons, physically maimed meth addicts who want to kill and eat Sunny.  Lucretia goes to save her.

I hated everything about this book.  It was just bizarre and not worth the cheap $.99 I paid for it.  This book was true horror--a grotesque descent into madness and mental illness.  An unreliable narrator is always unsettling but when it is a psychotic child, it pushes way past my comfort barrier.  True mental illness is full of this type of horror and I just didn't enjoy this read.  This is apparently the prequel to a full-length novel, if you truly want to experience more horror-ibleness.

No more for me!  Ick.