Book Review
Hey there! So this post is a little bit different from the posts I normally make. This is still the space where I post my recommendations on fanfiction and random other fandom things. However, I thought to myself that some people might enjoy seeing a few reviews on some books that might even add them to a new fandom! Lucky for me, yesterday I got nine new books from Books-A-Million and I just finished one of them! With no further ado, welcome to this book review.
The Cellar
Written by Natasha Preston
Part of a series
Warning(s): Kidnapping, Graphic Violence, Murder, Mentions of sex, mentions of rape (not correlated with the rape), mentions of prostitution, mentions of child abuse (little unsure but better be safe than sorry), Cussing, Suicide through overdose
Some of you may actually know this story from Wattpad. Yes, this story started out on Wattpad and was published in actual book form. It was an interesting find at Books A Million to say the least. The story is set in England and is about a girl named Summer who is kidnapped one night. It does switch POV's with Lewis (Summer's boyfriend) and Clover (Summer's kidnapper whose actual name (?) is Colin). After Clover kidnaps her, Summer becomes Lily and is held in a hidden basement home with three other women who had also been kidnapped by Clover. Although they did have different names, Clover renamed them Rose, Violet, and Poppy. The story is about Summer trying to survive and the search from Lewis' POV to find her. If you continue reading this review from this point on, there will be potential spoilers since I will be addressing the warnings up above and trying to include anything else that may trigger someone. Please do not continue reading if you do not want the potential spoilers. I will include my thoughts about the book as a whole under the next set of bold text. Skip there to avoid any potential spoilers. Thank you.
All of the girls are kidnapped and expected to do as Clover says which thankfully isn't much. He requires them to take showers twice a day, clean the whole basement multiple times a day, and eat breakfast and dinner with him and lunch on weekends. Clover is shown through his POV and flashbacks to have had a normal childhood up until his mother discovered his father sleeping with a prostitute. Since he was so young when it happened and never got to listen to his father's explanation for this, he believes what his mother taught him. That all prostitutes are evil and should be murdered as their punishment. Therefore, he murders the prostitutes most often in front of the girls since he wants them to see why he has to hide them away from the world as he thinks hiding them prevents them from turning into prostitutes. He also has an extreme aversion to being dirty and therefore leaves all cleanup to the girls and only collects the body to then sink it in a canal. If a girl pushes him far enough, he will switch into the man he is when he's killing the prostitutes and kill the girl. This is seen in the beginning of the book after Violet attempts to knock him out with a vase and he then kills her. However, he hates doing this as he feels unsettled and anxious until he can replace the girl with another one. Most of the time these girls are found on the streets either hitchhiking or living on the streets. This is where Summer differs as she is actually only sixteen when kidnapped and comes from a loving family. The mentions of sex and mentions of rape are of course entirely seperated from each other. There is a flashback where Summer has sex with her boyfriend Lewis but it is not graphic. The most graphic it gets is talking about the pain as "it" enters. However, the rape is an entirely different thing. After Clover "falls in love" with a girl he has added to his group (always the four: Lily, Rose, Violet, and Poppy, never more or less), he takes them into a special room in the basement where he rapes them. However, due to Rose's special situation as to how she was kidnapped, it is not portrayed as rape in her case. The child abuse is since Clover says the voice in his head calling him names and hurting him is his dead mother's voice. At the end of the book, after the girls are rescued, Rose takes pills and overdoses to kill herself as she wanted to be with Clover.
This is the end of any potential spoilers. After this, I will talk about my thoughts on the book as a whole. Thank you.
All in all, this book was never one I wanted to put down. However, there were some parts that seemed slightly over dramatized and such. This did not detract from the appeal from the book. I will return to this book in the future and I might even read some of the other books in the series if I see them again. If you think this is the sort of book you'd like, I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for reading and see you in the next post!
The Cellar
Written by Natasha Preston
Part of a series
Warning(s): Kidnapping, Graphic Violence, Murder, Mentions of sex, mentions of rape (not correlated with the rape), mentions of prostitution, mentions of child abuse (little unsure but better be safe than sorry), Cussing, Suicide through overdose
Some of you may actually know this story from Wattpad. Yes, this story started out on Wattpad and was published in actual book form. It was an interesting find at Books A Million to say the least. The story is set in England and is about a girl named Summer who is kidnapped one night. It does switch POV's with Lewis (Summer's boyfriend) and Clover (Summer's kidnapper whose actual name (?) is Colin). After Clover kidnaps her, Summer becomes Lily and is held in a hidden basement home with three other women who had also been kidnapped by Clover. Although they did have different names, Clover renamed them Rose, Violet, and Poppy. The story is about Summer trying to survive and the search from Lewis' POV to find her. If you continue reading this review from this point on, there will be potential spoilers since I will be addressing the warnings up above and trying to include anything else that may trigger someone. Please do not continue reading if you do not want the potential spoilers. I will include my thoughts about the book as a whole under the next set of bold text. Skip there to avoid any potential spoilers. Thank you.
All of the girls are kidnapped and expected to do as Clover says which thankfully isn't much. He requires them to take showers twice a day, clean the whole basement multiple times a day, and eat breakfast and dinner with him and lunch on weekends. Clover is shown through his POV and flashbacks to have had a normal childhood up until his mother discovered his father sleeping with a prostitute. Since he was so young when it happened and never got to listen to his father's explanation for this, he believes what his mother taught him. That all prostitutes are evil and should be murdered as their punishment. Therefore, he murders the prostitutes most often in front of the girls since he wants them to see why he has to hide them away from the world as he thinks hiding them prevents them from turning into prostitutes. He also has an extreme aversion to being dirty and therefore leaves all cleanup to the girls and only collects the body to then sink it in a canal. If a girl pushes him far enough, he will switch into the man he is when he's killing the prostitutes and kill the girl. This is seen in the beginning of the book after Violet attempts to knock him out with a vase and he then kills her. However, he hates doing this as he feels unsettled and anxious until he can replace the girl with another one. Most of the time these girls are found on the streets either hitchhiking or living on the streets. This is where Summer differs as she is actually only sixteen when kidnapped and comes from a loving family. The mentions of sex and mentions of rape are of course entirely seperated from each other. There is a flashback where Summer has sex with her boyfriend Lewis but it is not graphic. The most graphic it gets is talking about the pain as "it" enters. However, the rape is an entirely different thing. After Clover "falls in love" with a girl he has added to his group (always the four: Lily, Rose, Violet, and Poppy, never more or less), he takes them into a special room in the basement where he rapes them. However, due to Rose's special situation as to how she was kidnapped, it is not portrayed as rape in her case. The child abuse is since Clover says the voice in his head calling him names and hurting him is his dead mother's voice. At the end of the book, after the girls are rescued, Rose takes pills and overdoses to kill herself as she wanted to be with Clover.
This is the end of any potential spoilers. After this, I will talk about my thoughts on the book as a whole. Thank you.
All in all, this book was never one I wanted to put down. However, there were some parts that seemed slightly over dramatized and such. This did not detract from the appeal from the book. I will return to this book in the future and I might even read some of the other books in the series if I see them again. If you think this is the sort of book you'd like, I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for reading and see you in the next post!
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