Conner and his fiancée Cassie had a fairytale love. They complemented each other in every way and looked forward to a perfect future ahead of them. In one day, that future is destroyed. Cassie is brutally murdered, leaving Conner broken, alone and filled with pain. He knows the pain of this loss will haunt him for the rest of his life.
After much deliberation, Conner decides that he will stop at nothing to avenge Cassieâs death. Tracking down her killer throws him into a world of moral ambiguity as he sets off on a meandering quest.
Without knowing how, Conner wants to inflict the same pain as the killer inflicted. But, as Conner gets closer to the moment of reckoning, he will face impossible choices and the realization that his elaborate plan may ultimately be derailed.
Conner and his fiancée Cassie had a fairytale love. They complemented each other in every way and looked forward to a perfect future ahead of them. In one day, that future is destroyed. Cassie is brutally murdered, leaving Conner broken, alone and filled with pain. He knows the pain of this loss will haunt him for the rest of his life.
After much deliberation, Conner decides that he will stop at nothing to avenge Cassieâs death. Tracking down her killer throws him into a world of moral ambiguity as he sets off on a meandering quest.
Without knowing how, Conner wants to inflict the same pain as the killer inflicted. But, as Conner gets closer to the moment of reckoning, he will face impossible choices and the realization that his elaborate plan may ultimately be derailed.
Cassie shoved the attacker away. She figured if she was able to get away from him, she hoped she could escape with superficial wounds.
The perpetrator was slicing her with an extremely tiny weapon. With a blade less than one half inch long, the pain was definitely being inflicted, but the cuts were not life-threatening.
She tried in vain to fight him off, blinded by the glint of the weapon reflecting off the table lamp. The attacker would pin her arms down against the baby-blue sheets with one hand and swing his other hand around and cut her body with the other. If she was able to squirm away with one hand, he would either push that arm down or pin it down deep into the mattress with a leg or his shoulders in order to continue to subdue her long enough to open her skin with the sharp object.
Cassie smelled faint laundry detergent as she fell off the bed. She saw some blood spatter on the mahogany floor. She then tried to roll underneath the bed, but the man grabbed her hair and slid her away from the bed across the wood floor. He continued to slice through her face and body with intention.
She grabbed her dark hair in her hand, trying to free herself and flee toward the front door. She caught a glimpse of the door, one that sheâd walked through countless times, hoping that she hadnât just walked through it for the last time.
As much as she tried to loosen his grip, she found it futile and instead attempted to prevent him from cutting her fur- ther. She realized that the entire front of her body had been sliced and there were about fifteen to twenty lacerations on her face and neck area. Still, the wounds werenât deep, and although they would leave permanent scars, they were un- likely to cause her to bleed to death, or at least that was what Cassie was praying for.
She was unable to make out who her attacker was. But that didnât matter. All she wanted to do was get away from him. She was strong. Sheâd played scholarship soccer in college, which was very much a contact sport, resulting in more concussions than most Division I NCAA football programs. Cassie flipped over and dragged her feet under her, looking to use her legs to evade her attacker and get to the front door of her apartment.
It was no use. The tall and strong man was able to subdue her, using one hand to pin her to the ground and the other hand to complete methodical slices. Cassie was mostly silent, grunting as the potential killer maneuvered the weapon.
Instead of continuing, Cassie began to cry. âHelp. Heeeeeelp.â
She grabbed his hand again, trying to shield herself from the attack. It was useless. He was dominating her, and it was unlikely she would be able to free herself.
Even still, she was committed to resisting. She wasnât going to relent and let this person overpower her without a struggle. She was going to fight with all her might until the very end.
Her head slammed into the floor, and she looked at her pale arm as it rested in front of her eyes. Several drops of blood left her arm and rested on the floor in front of her. Not gushes of blood, but tiny drops of almost black blood, which contrasted with the dark brown wood.
Cassie again began to slither away, pushing her arms to- ward the attackerâs face to mask the slices. He was undaunted by this and grabbed her throat, jamming the short, sharp item into her face and neck.
In defiance, she became obsessed with trying to wrestle the weapon away. She figured that if she could pry it from his fingers, she could stop the surface wounds from opening and perhaps even turn the tables on him to gouge his eyes or slice his neck, buying time for her to escape.
The more she tried to wrestle the small item out of his hand, the worse it became. He would just slam her head into the floor harder, or move the knife from her body to her face, defiling her attractive appearance. The blood droplets be- gan multiplying, like burgundy raindrops pelting the silent planks of timber.
The blurb for this book offers what could be an incredible story. I expected a dark, gritty, painful tale of revenge after Conner comes home to find the love of his life, Cassie, dead on the floor after having been brutally murdered. I looked forward to watching Conner spiral into darkness while plotting, and executing his plan for revenge. Instead, the book delivered was a letdown.
When meeting new characters, there is a lot of time spent on describing almost all of their features to give us their picture. From hair color and length, to shape of their nose, and even how much they weigh, all of the information is just thrown at you all in one go. And most of that information isn't even pertinent to the story. Particular attention was payed to Cassie in an effort to emphasize to the reader that she was beautiful. So much so that in the first chapter where we're thrust into a nightmare Cassie is having, and a point is made in the last few sentences to tell us that she has an attractive face.
Outside of that, a lot of the writing is just an information dump. It doesn't feel organic at all, and could benefit from the "rule" of "show, don't tell" in some instances. Despite knowing Conner is wildly in love with Cassie, and that he is suffering something fierce after her death, it's hard to connect with him (and even with the little bit of Cassie we get), because the information is almost presented clinically, like bullet points down a page.
I think this story has great potential, though. I mean, who doesn't love diving into a good revenge tale that makes you question the deepest, darkest desires of people? However, it could benefit from some reworking and editing to bring out that potential.