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A review by lisaluvsliterature
A Family of Killers by Bryce Moore
adventurous
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Last year I read a book by this author that I really enjoyed called Don’t Go To Sleep. So when this historical fiction horror story about a serial killer family in Kansas was sent to me, I was extremely eager to read it.
Overall there was a lot of interesting bits to this story. I can’t believe living this close to where all the actual history of the Bender family happened, that other than a few very small stories on the news recently about an anniversary or something, I didn’t know much about this story. I liked how at the beginning of each chapter there was a snippet from real news stories when it was all going on. To be fair, there wasn’t exactly a complete record of these events to give a lot more to the story, which I think gave this author a lot of openings to write his story the way he did.
The story was really about Warren coming into his own, growing up. As the youngest son in a family where he’d also been quite a few years behind his other brothers, he’d kind of had things easier and not only did he not feel like he was capable of as much as his brothers, no one else in the family saw him that way either. There was a lot of interesting history and even geography type of facts told as he traveled to try to find his father who had left to find a friend of the family who hadn’t shown up when he and his infant daughter were supposed to. So this was also a bit of a survival story, as Warren had to remember how to survive in the wilderness. Of course he’d always had his family to do all the actual work, so even though his father and brothers had shown him what to do, it wasn’t ingrained and something he had practice at doing.
Warren had a lot of issues going on with himself to deal with as well. First he totally had social anxiety, didn’t like to be around a lot of people, and didn’t know how to always talk to strangers or even people he knew. He seemed to be a bit of a germ-a-phobe as well. And finally he had this voice inside of him telling him to do horrible violent things to people. Even his own family members. Just to see the gory results. To be fair, I feel like that last aspect didn’t need to be part of the story? But maybe it was just to show that it could be easy to do those things or to give empathy to the Benders? I don’t know. I feel like there were other parts the author had in the story that showed that well enough without this extra bit.
There was a lot of excitement in this story. A tornado, bandits trying to rob him, stampeding buffalo herds, the Benders themselves, and just getting lost too. There was code breaking, solving a mystery and using clues to try to find the Benders. I could see my students enjoying this one for sure!
Overall there was a lot of interesting bits to this story. I can’t believe living this close to where all the actual history of the Bender family happened, that other than a few very small stories on the news recently about an anniversary or something, I didn’t know much about this story. I liked how at the beginning of each chapter there was a snippet from real news stories when it was all going on. To be fair, there wasn’t exactly a complete record of these events to give a lot more to the story, which I think gave this author a lot of openings to write his story the way he did.
The story was really about Warren coming into his own, growing up. As the youngest son in a family where he’d also been quite a few years behind his other brothers, he’d kind of had things easier and not only did he not feel like he was capable of as much as his brothers, no one else in the family saw him that way either. There was a lot of interesting history and even geography type of facts told as he traveled to try to find his father who had left to find a friend of the family who hadn’t shown up when he and his infant daughter were supposed to. So this was also a bit of a survival story, as Warren had to remember how to survive in the wilderness. Of course he’d always had his family to do all the actual work, so even though his father and brothers had shown him what to do, it wasn’t ingrained and something he had practice at doing.
Warren had a lot of issues going on with himself to deal with as well. First he totally had social anxiety, didn’t like to be around a lot of people, and didn’t know how to always talk to strangers or even people he knew. He seemed to be a bit of a germ-a-phobe as well. And finally he had this voice inside of him telling him to do horrible violent things to people. Even his own family members. Just to see the gory results. To be fair, I feel like that last aspect didn’t need to be part of the story? But maybe it was just to show that it could be easy to do those things or to give empathy to the Benders? I don’t know. I feel like there were other parts the author had in the story that showed that well enough without this extra bit.
There was a lot of excitement in this story. A tornado, bandits trying to rob him, stampeding buffalo herds, the Benders themselves, and just getting lost too. There was code breaking, solving a mystery and using clues to try to find the Benders. I could see my students enjoying this one for sure!