This book was extremely well written. I was captivated by the story immediately and the writer had a great way of pulling you in to see things from the characters perspective.
The fact that an 8 yr old girl and 26 year old man had this romantic attraction towards one another did make me uneasy at times. And the girl hardly spoke and was very mentally damaged from her traumatic childhood. So I kept thinking for a predator, what does he see in her??? She’s perfect prey…. She doesn’t speak to anyone, she has a neglectful drug addict family that doesn’t blink an eye about their 8 yr old spending lots of private time with this biker dude, and the girl is desperate for love and attention. Easy prey.
Some of the adults were totally cool with them being together and thought they were cute. That blew me away. No one truly cared about this girl. They were laying in bed together, she stayed the night at his house, went skinny dipping, kissed and everyone referred to him as her boyfriend. Wtf?
But the book did not portray the man as grooming her or being a manipulative pedo, instead as a care taker who is looking out for her all those years, then whoops they end up getting intimate when she’s 13 and it never stops from then on. But at the end of the day, he was attracted to a little girl and didn’t stop the sexual acts when he’s The adult and shouldn’t have let it even come that close. He makes it seem like he didn’t have control and the girl seemed older than her age and knew what she wanted. In a perfect world, he should have controlled his urges and stopped the girl. Cut her off from his life or waited until the girl was of age or at least 17!!! I have a 13 year old, and I cannot fathom what this girl went through in the story.
He wasn’t really attracted to adult women, and the only thing that turned him on was this little girl. So another Red flag! Sorry but that classifies him as a pedo in my book. “Love is Love” doesn’t apply when one of the people are a young child and the other a full grown adult.
With all that being said, I understand that this is some peoples reality, so to see it from another prospective was fascinating. It’s a taboo subject for most people, but it’s something that should be acknowledged because these kinds of stories are real to some folks. I’m an open minded person, so I can see how the writer was trying to get the message across. The writing was so well done, I can’t express that enough!
I rated the overall experience a 4 stars, only because I felt it glorified Pedophilia and made the offender the good guy, and the few people who tried to help the girl the bad guys. So I can’t give a full 5 star. The narrator was great though!
I would recommend this book if you can handle the dynamic between the main characters love story and the pedo vibes. It’s the kind of book that sticks with you!!