Review: Good story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 27, 2014
I liked the book, and the main character, Mark. The story appears to have some similarities to the horrendous murder of young Jamie Bulger by two children, Venable and Thompson. The story goes on to detail the life of one of the child murderers, who didn't actually commit the crime, after he's released from prison. While the story was well done, with a few minor editing issues, I have to say that I didn't like Mark's want-to-be girlfriend mainly because her jealousy issues caused severe physical damage to Mark. Sure, she had some self esteem issues, but what sort of mind makes someone do what she did? Not only did she enter Mark's apartment several times, when he wasn't home, to snoop and see if he was cheating on her, she sets it up so the brother of the murdered child almost beats him to death. I was glad when she was charged in the assault. And I felt sorry for Mark throughout the book. Not only was he a bullied and terrified child, but he was abandoned by an unloving mother and betrayed by a woman he cared about - one he cared about a lot longer than she knew of until his letter at the end explained it all. My only real complaint is that I wish the book hadn't ended when it did. While the book doesn't have a cliffhanger ending, I wanted to know if Mark ever cleared his name, what happened to Natalie's case, and what happened with them. A good book pulls you into the story and makes you care about the characters; this book did that for me.