A review by booking_along
The Girl Before by Rena Olsen

5.0

this book is hugely disturbing in the topics and ways it handles them, but in a way that you can not put this book down!

Which sounds very strange, i know.

Let me try to explain...


This book is about the kidnappers of little girls and since the real summary of what the book is about is a bit of a spoiler for the first 10 to 20 pages of the book lets just be safe and:
and the woman that is in charge of rising the girls so that they can be sold to the highest paying "client", but since the woman herself was kidnapped when she was a little girl she really has no real world view in what is "normal" and sees "prepping" little girls to become sex slaves is perfectly normal.



To me the writing of how Clara's story unfolded felt strangely realistic in the way that i could understand how she felt and why she felt that way.

Why she trusted her husband the way she did and how she felt she was doing the right thing and the best she could do.

This book really managed to put my mind into the position of having to imagine being in Clara's place and having to live through that kind of horror....

Lets just say the writing was FANTASTIC!


And the plot -even though one of the most horrendous topics!- was so sensationally done that while you constantly though "that is disgusting! someone stop this right now! how can that be happening without anyone noticing and stopping it!" you also kind of believe how it all unfolds in a way that since sadly this kind of horrendous thing actually happens in the real world, i could imagine that it might actually happen in this way? Does that even make any sense at all?

This book was excellently done in the way that it handles a really appalling topic in a way that makes it at the same time even more realistically vile and at the same time makes you kind of understand how some people can't help being part of it anymore then we can help being disgusted by it all.


Since this entire "review" i just did was basically just me rambling about this book in a very unhelpful way....

lets just cut this and end this with very simply:

READ THIS BOOK ITS OUTSTANDING!

But we warned that it handles sex trade, kidnapping, rape and similar topics so if you are sensible to those topics... you know the drill!