Let's Go Play at the Adams

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Ketchum’s novel shows just how easily children can become corrupted and led down some dark and dangerous paths to human depravity. I 1st read this book when on a family holiday, I was 14 and felt that I could instantly relate to many of the characters, although as the book progressed I did find myself becoming more and more abhorred by their behaviours - not because of what they did but because I could see in some of my social circle much of the conflicted desires and attempts at control. But Barbara wakes up to find herself tightly tied to a bed and gagged, with the faces of her charges—and three of their neighbor friends—grinning down at her. Well, at least they did until Jack Ketchum blew up the literary world with "The Girl Next Door" which was based on the horrible Sylvia Likens murder in Indiana by a bunch of neighborhood delinquents. She’s been deprived of basic human needs – they’ve limited her food intake to weaken her, only allow her to use the washroom twice a day and she isn’t being bathed or cleaned.

As someone who has dealt with some mental health issues and spent time thinking about what happens when we die, I found Johnson’s thought process about this fascinating. Shocking and sickening, yet tender and nakedly human, you will never forget reading this one, I promise. I'm fascinated by the mental processes that people go through when they're in the process of objectifying others -- and, from that perspective, this book is amazing. Barbara’s sanity was pushed to – and beyond – its limit as the book reached its conclusion, and I did feel her mental state rapidly diminishing as she became aware of the ultimate plan for her.Whether this was to capitalize on the notoriety of the book or to try and make a decent effort to follow the children post murder, Johnson himself had done a decent enough job of philosophizing what was to come for the group. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. The horrendous act within the book appears to have been used as a device for the author to discuss the difficulties of peer pressure and as I mentioned before, what happens when someone doesn’t stand up to the group.

One quick thing to say about the writing is that it really would have been nice to have more paragraph breaks! Because we’re being shown something terrifying or disturbing or just kinda squicky, there’s a distancing that authors do, whether it’s the injection of black humor, the killer being a masked unstoppable monster, or simply the evil torturer being so horrifyingly evil that they couldn’t possibly exist. instead their works have an almost ironic distance from the material that encourages contemplation of - rather than engulfment by - that material. I then warned my stepdad about trusting kids with his money and the danger of letting them step foot into his house.As I've read a lot of horror and dark psychological thrillers since reading this, I wonder if a re-read will make it seem less scary, but at the same time, I fear the images in the darkest corners of my mind will come flooding back upon reading it again. The book was hard to put down while simultaneously hard to carry on with and the ending left me reeling.

Its plot focuses on a group of rural Maryland children who drug, incapacitate, and eventually torture the college student babysitter hired by their parents while they are away in Europe for two weeks. The events that occur in this book are so repugnant that I feel sort of dirty making money off of it. When the story is so dark and heavy, you need a bit of a breather sometimes, and you didn’t get much of that with this novel. It made me think about a lot of questions the book asked and the story and the characters will be with me for many moons. The premise sounded fun and, as someone who has a high tolerance for bad subject matter, I wasn't worried about the content warnings.Never had I before read something with this intense of content and had so much trouble staying awake, like Droopy Dog with sleep apnea.

I expected low-quality pulp fiction writing, but was surprised what a smart, taut thriller this was. In 2022, Centipede Press issued a hardback edition, with a limited 500 copies signed by Stefan Dziemianowicz and Dan Rempel, who wrote a new introduction. As I mentioned before – the entire time Barbara was captive, I hoped and believed that somehow she’d be released, be let go.

However, I don't think I ever expected it would still have such a strong impact on my thoughts and feelings about 25 years later.