Be careful what you post online. Your next check-in might lead him right to you…
A serial rapist is kidnapping teenage girls. But he’s not interested in just any teenage girls—only virgins. He hunts them by following their status updates and check-ins on social media. Once he’s captured them, they’re locked away in his sound-proof basement until they’re groomed and ready. He throws them away like pieces of trash after he’s stolen their innocence. Nobody escapes alive.
Until Ella.
Ella risks it all to escape, setting herself and the other girls free. But only Sarah—the girl whose been captive the longest—gets out with her. The girls are hospitalized and surrounded by FBI agents who will stop at nothing to find the man responsible. Ella and Sarah are the key to their investigation, but Sarah’s hiding something and it isn’t long before Ella discovers her nightmare is far from over.
Warning: Contains sexual violence which may be a trigger for some readers.
Book Info: Print length: 359 pages. Publisher: Rise Press. Publication Date: 11 April 2017
My Thoughts:
Firstly, this book is very disturbing and if you’ve read the blurb above and think this isn’t for you because of the content or could cause triggering, then I would strongly recommend you DO NOT read this.
Lucinda Berry writes books that are always dark and disturbing and having read 4 of her previous books, I knew what to expect in terms of being mentally battered and bruised for the duration of this story.
Appetite for Innocence is about a serial rapist who is targeting young teenage girls from religious backgrounds who are virgins. Once he’s kidnapped them, he keeps them in his basement grooming them and then discarding them as soon as he tires of them.
The story has two main narrators, Sarah, the oldest of the girls who has been in the basement the longest and Ella, the latest victim who was abducted whilst out on her daily run.
With a dual timeframe, the readers follow the girls through this horrific journey with alternating chapters from NOW, where they are both in hospital having managed to escape and THEN, when Ella is first kidnapped and the story leading up to their escape.
This is NOT an easy book to read and the emotions and pure terror the girls experience throughout this ordeal are heart-breaking. It’s graphic and traumatic as you would expect from Lucinda Berry.
It feels odd to say that I really “enjoyed” this book and would recommend it to fans of dark and disturbing thrillers, because of the subject matter, but I would, because it’s also thought-provoking and has a couple of really clever twists too.
