Jon Athan

Very badly written. If this were a movie, I would have been scanning forward past the insane behaviors of the characters (insane and unrealistic) looking for the actual kid trafficking part where we are supposed to see what happens after the kids get taken. All the while biching and moaning about how stupid these people are. I am not an author, and I applaud anyone who attempts it, but come one, get some beta readers you can trust. I might have run-on sentences or mistakes in my reviews, but I am not trying to make money from people.

This book is full of plot holes, bad dialogue, and mixed character motivations and actions. It’s like the author couldn’t make up his mind on whether the father was a normal suburban dad who had a shred of intelligence or an idiot who is grasping at straws looking for his daughter, and has overnight become an expert in torture gore. The other characters were just as badly written.

We are given the actually kid scenes in the form of a random abduction in the first couple of chapters. They are set up to give the reader an idea of what "grooming" is, and it does show a bit of kid torture, but it is as unrealistic as possible. The damage incurred doesn't match up with what inflicted it. Darts thrown by hand from a distance will not crack and break bones. Kicking and stomping repeatedly a 10-year-old boy will not let him continue to groan and cry. This was the extent of what happens after the kids were taken. This was two chapters and did not include the main story
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There is another chapter that is intended to inform about the type of internet trapping of young girls who are manipulated into sending in increasingly disturbing pictures of themselves in order to prevent the initially tame nude photographs that were taken under false pretenses from getting out.

The child taken from the main story was apparently not told about the bad man who was stalking her. Her father knew about it, he confronted the guy multiple times, and even installed a security system. However, when it came down to it, no one bothered telling the girl to stay away from strangers because the guy had no problem getting her to go with him. This was the end of what we see or hear from the girl. Nothing else until a third person retelling of the events at the final chapter.


The book is about the father and his descent into madness while going about trying to find his missing daughter. Trying to locate the guy who took her. This is where the torture happens. The whole setup is very bad. It’s as if the author spent all his time and energy writing torture and gore scenes and needed a story to tell them. Since the story is about one girl being taken, that wouldn’t cover all the gore. Plus, no one really wants to write about torturing little girls for pages on end. So, the author decided he needed some adult, and unlikeable characters. Cue the sex offenders listed online. The father is the character who is tapped to perform all the gore. His motivation is to locate his missing girl. He simply goes on the sex offender website and starts randomly checking out guys who “seem” to fit a profile that would make sense if they were going after his daughter. He totally forgot about the guy who he confronted multiple times about perving on his daughter. But, oh well, the author needed some fall guys and these random offenders made the cut. Don’t even get me going on how the father actually is able to find the guy. Seriously? A website that they guy had set up as cover for him taking kid pictures at the park, and he puts his actual name and address for it. The father goes to the website, looks up contact information and goes there. The guy is actually there.

I don't know how this book got such good reviews. It's a split between great reviews and one-star ratings denouncing this as a disgusting read. I don't know about the gore part because I skipped it. Yeah, that's what was supposed to be the main draw, but I didn't care to read about tedious ways to extracting information. I wanted to read about what happens to a kid after he gets taken. I initially thought that this was going to be featured, but it turns out that it isn't the case.

Whatever.… (meer)