[Review] The Merciless by Danielle Vega
Friday, July 04, 2014Title: The Merciless
Author: Danielle Vega
Series: The Merciless #1
Genre: YA Horror
Format: Hardcover, 279 pages
Release Date: June 12th 2014
Publisher: Razorbill
Source: Bought
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Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned
Brooklyn Stevens sits in a pool of her own blood, tied up and gagged. No one outside of these dank basement walls knows she’s here. No one can hear her scream.
Sofia Flores knows she shouldn’t have gotten involved. When she befriended Riley, Grace, and Alexis on her first day at school, she admired them, with their perfect hair and their good-girl ways. They said they wanted to save Brooklyn. They wanted to help her. Sofia didn’t realize they believed Brooklyn was possessed.
Now, Riley and the girls are performing an exorcism on Brooklyn—but their idea of an exorcism is closer to torture than salvation. All Sofia wants is to get out of this house. But there is no way out. Sofia can’t go against the other girls . . . unless she wants to be next. . . .
In this chilling debut, Danielle Vega delivers blood-curdling suspense and terror on every page. By the shockingly twisted end, readers will be faced with the most haunting question of all: Is there evil in all of us?
This book is CREEPY. I feel like that is all I can tell you about this book because if I say anything else I will ruin the surprises that seem to come with every chapter. I loved the tone of this book because it was not at all dark at the beginning. It actually felt like your regular YA contemporary where a girl moved to a new town and has to find her way around a new school, and find some new friends. And that lead to some bad friend decisions (they were obviously not who they said they were), which then read to some pretty freaky shit (them being obsessed with paying for their sins). There were times when I literally convulsed from repulsion of some of the things that happened in this book. They were so gross that I will not explain them here, you will just have to read the book and find out for yourself.
I loved teh characters in this book because they were so vivid and so VERY different from each other. I think they all were character extremes of friends we all have and put them in a catholic setting and you get characters getting aught up in sins, witchcraft and murder. There was one character that to me made no sense and that was Charlie. He was a boy that our main character Sofia meets on her first day of school, and they continue to flirt etc. But because the book was mostly about Riley, Alexis and Grace and their friendship with Sofia and how that friendships can go to the extremes i felt like Charlie didn't matter to the story at all. I didn't think he contributed enough to the story to be relevant and although I liked the added love story to this mostly dark book, I felt it stood out like a sore thumb.
The Merciless is not for the faint of heart. This book is dark, and has some very gross descriptive parts. The end in particular was gruesome and a little jarring. I did not see it coming and honestly it made e super excited for the next book because I need to know what happens to Sofia! This book is a horror so beware of that but I loved it and would recommend to all that love the genre!
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