The Heart of a Child
Author: Adam Cosco
Plot (Book Description): Eleven-year-old Ava O’Brien has always been quiet, observant, and just a little different. But when she tells her parents about a day at school that ended in horror, they’re left shaken and uncertain. Ava’s story is classmates blindfolded and led into a hidden basement, masked figures performing unthinkable rituals, and a darkness so suffocating that it still haunts her dreams. Her details are vivid, her fear palpable—too vivid to dismiss as fantasy. Teddy and Barbara O’Brien want to believe it’s all in their daughter’s mind. But as cracks form in the facade of their small-town life, they realize Ava’s account may be more than a story. If she’s telling the truth, then evil is closer than they ever imagined—and it’s been watching all along.
My Review and Thoughts:
What a punch in the gut. Truly a dark twisted tail that basically lingers with you inside your conscience long after the last page is read.
Adam created a story that not only transcends off the page, but also into your nightmares, into your dreams, into your waking moments. I found this book to be thought-provoking, brutal, honest and very intense. It's a book that not only displays an imagination to a satisfaction for the reader, but it also displays a deeper, darker understanding of life. For the imagination of the story feels real. The book feels real. The horrors feel real. The intensity most of all runs through your system and attacks your emotions. The book is something to be explored. Something to be talked about. Something to be recommended. Something that becomes ingrained into your reality, for that's what this book does. It plays with the reality inside your mind. Inside your thoughts.
Adam knows how to tell a story. He knows how to create characters. He knows how to put situations on page that bleed rapidly into your system, as if you're bleeding along with it.
This is a book that I will remember. That I will think about and even after finishing it days ago, I am still contemplating it, still talking about it and most assuredly, still thinking about it and I think that is what readers will do also. Those that explore this book cannot help but walk away and scratch your head and think wow what did I just read.
Very dramatic, very visual in the way Adam describes the situations and the drama taking place. The nightmarish realities taking place become visual moments inside the reader's mind that they can't help but not think is this nightmare happening to me.
Simply put this is a book that should be read, should be explored and most definitely should be talked about. It should be expressed and even read a second time to gather all its nightmarish moments of clarity that haunt your senses.
Would I Return to it Again: I have already reread several moments in this book moments that I bookmarked and thought that needed to be read and contemplated again so yes I think it deserves a second reading for it is something that one can explore all over again that is how good Adam creates this imaginative story of darkness.
Would I Recommend: As I have said in my review, absolutely should be recommended. Should be read by anyone wanting a thought-provoking, draining story that not only lingers in your conscience, but also could give you nightmares for just how decayed and dark this story is.
My Rating: 4 OUT OF 5
Four Final Words: Brutally Nightmarish. Complex Darkness.