Story for the Week
Almost everyone has heard (or used) the expression that something was like watching a trainwreck. It’s something embarrassing or terrible, but you can’t seem to make yourself look away. I’ve used the expression myself, and I have never, for the life of me, been able to explain the appeal.
Human beings seem fascinated by the unusual. P.T. Barnum made a living on human curiosities. Ripley’s Believe It or Not! started as a newspaper panel showing unusual and sometimes unbelievable things and grew into museums around the world. Carnivals and state fairs used to stage train crashes to attract and draw in crowds. And don’t even get me started on demolition derbies where the whole point is to crash cars until there’s only one left running. People pay money to watch these events.
Corinne and I recently explored the Pompeii exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry (The Museum I Hate to Love). She’s a bit of a history buff, so she had wanted to go from the time the exhibit opened, and we finally made that happen over her winter break this past December. She is also a lover of animals, so the piece she really wanted to see was a plaster cast of a dog that had perished. But that was not the only cast of death…not by a long shot. There were quite a few casts of people who perished, one of them literally crawling up a set of stairs.
While we were there, it reminded her that she asked about going to the Medieval Torture Museum in the city. My brother-in-law went once and said that it was interesting. Covering more than 6,000 square feet, the museum holds more than 100 instruments of torture and confinement. We’re planning a visit over spring break in March, and I’m more than a little fascinated by the idea. I mean, I play The Sims Medieval, and you can torture your Sims. Heck, I’ve tortured Sims in the regular Sims games. But the Medieval Torture Museum feels like one of those situations where you want to look away and you can’t because you just can’t believe it was real.
Taking things a step further, we can look at the horror genre of books and film. Stephen King made a career based on the philosophy that if he can’t scare you, he’ll gross you out. Plenty of his books have been turned into movies…most trying to be scary, but many of them just gross—Pet Sematary, Children of the Corn, and Creepshow come immediately to mind. And then, of course, there’s the Saw franchise. I’ve only seen the first one because I prefer my horror to be scary versus gross. But the people who love it really love it. It’s almost like we can’t help but be fascinated by the macabre.
I am a huge fan of Criminal Minds, which regularly portrays the stories of sick and twisted criminals. I can watch an episode and fully intend to fold laundry or write a blog post while the episode is on, and I find myself watching, completely still, with a piece of clothing in my hand that never gets folded. It’s so fascinating that I can’t look away…like watching a trainwreck.
There is a point, however, where I have to draw the line in my “entertainment.” If the book reviewed below were a television show or a movie, I wouldn’t watch it. I couldn’t watch it. I do not view the sadistic events in this book as entertainment. It is definitely not a must-read for me.
Book Review
⭐
1 Star for All the Little Raindrops by Mia Sheridan
390 pages
Publisher: Montlake
Publication Date: November 1, 2023
This title was an Amazon First Reads selection.
Publisher’s Description
It’s senior-year spring break, and Noelle Meyer and Evan Sinclair have been kidnapped. Neither knows why they were chosen, only that they share a tragic past: Evan’s father got away with killing Noelle’s mother, effectively ruining her family when the death was ruled an accident.
Despite the connection that should have made them enemies, the teens instead unite to face their other common denominator—their abductors. Noelle and Evan survive one sadistic circumstance after another, eventually making a harrowing escape. But every happy ending comes at a price…
Years later, Evan, now a private investigator, revisits the crime when he learns it may be ongoing. He reaches out to Noelle for help, and they discover that the answers lie with a man known only as the Collector. To close their case and solve the ones that followed, Noelle and Evan must unmask this mysterious spectator—the only man who knows enough secrets to take their captors down.
************
Main Characters:
- Noelle Meyer – 18-year-old high school senior, daughter of an electrician, abducted leaving her waitressing job, her mother was killed by Evan’s father after an alleged affair
- Evan Sinclair – 18-year-old high school senior, son of a very wealthy man, abducted leaving the gym, his father was never convicted of killing Noelle’s mother after he claimed it was accidental because he thought she was a trespasser
- The Collector – unknown character who is aware of Noelle and Evan’s abduction
Trigger warning: sexual assault, rape, torture, human trafficking, trauma bonding
Do not make light of the trigger warnings on this one. If I had known how bad it really was, I would not have selected it as my Amazon First Reads. I nearly rated it two stars for a decent twist at the end that I didn’t see coming, but I settled on one star because the storyline is so abhorrent to me. I wouldn’t say this book was particularly graphic. Most of the trigger warnings are implied and not described in detail, but it didn’t make it any less unappealing.
Noelle and Evan have both been kidnapped and placed in two separate cages in a dark room. They are kept isolated, not communicating with their captor or captors. Fed sporadically and very little so that they don’t know how many days have passed and they have little to no strength, they are eventually “rented” by strangers and taken to another room where truly unspeakable are done to them. To add to the despicableness, when they’re rented, they are faced with a choice: allow some horrible bodily harm to be taken out on the other (for example, chopping off two fingers) or face their renter.
Already connected by the fact that Evan’s father killed Noelle’s mother, after their abduction and escape, they feel permanently bonded. The book alternates between their points of view beginning with their abduction experience, covering a brief section a year after their escape, and about 40% of the way through the book is seven years later. As an adult, Evan works as a private investigator and continually looks for leads to cases that might be similar to their abduction since theirs was never solved. When he eventually finds what appears to be a real lead, he reaches out to Noelle for help.
***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***
So the basis of the whole storyline is that Evan and Noelle’s abduction was part of an elaborate online streaming game that has been going on for decades. Typically those abducted won’t be missed—homeless people, illegals, criminals. Participants in the game place bets on how the abductees will respond when given their choice to spare themselves from being rented by allowing something to be done to the other person. Just like any other betting game, the higher the stakes, the greater the payout. And the biggest payout is betting on the captives to escape.
The participants also send “gifts” to the captives…additional food, treats in the form of candy or extra water. When The Collector realizes that Noelle and Evan aren’t going to allow the other to be hurt, he decides that maybe he can gift them items that they can use to help them to escape (which is technically against the rules), thus earning him the largest prize.
Challenges with the book as a whole, aside from the subject matter: From the start, I assumed Noelle was abducted first. The book starts with her, and Evan is brought in later. He mentions that he was held somewhere else first, but I never got the impression that he had been abducted first. And this is a huge plot point later when we find out that both of their fathers were involved in the selection of who was abducted.
Noelle’s father, having never gotten over his wife’s murder (which, yes, it turned out to be murder because she was planning to expose Evan’s father) finds out about this “game” being played and happens to have a friend who is good at hacking. He gets that friend to make Evan the target of the next round so that Evan is abducted. Evan’s father, as it turns out, participates in the game. When he realizes his son is a victim, he tries to get Evan removed, but that is against the rules. To somehow make Evan’s father feel better about the whole thing, the powers that be allow Mr. Sinclair to choose the other victim, so he chooses Noelle.
Next…we never know for sure what happens to Evan when he is rented, but it’s clear that Noelle is raped repeatedly. In fact, when she mentions the first time that she’s a virgin, it actually makes the person who transfers her to the other room smile because that will make her more valuable to the renter. This went on for six weeks. When they escape, they discover they are in the middle of nowhere in Mexico and make their way to a motel. Somehow the clerk believes Evan when he tells her that they’ve been robbed and that his father has money and will pay double, triple, quadruple for the room, and she gives him a room key.
Noelle showers while Evan calls his dad, wraps herself in a towel, and then immediately falls asleep. When she awakens in a panic, Evan reassures her they really did escape. She realizes he also showered and is wrapped in a towel…and then they decide they need to have sex to make them forget what happened to them? WHAT?!?!
Once they return home, Evan seeks Noelle out, but his father discovers him at Noelle’s house and tells him he can never see her again. He goes off to Stanford, and the next time we see them, it’s a year later. Noelle is in California for work and decides to reach out to Evan. Again, they are drawn together and spend the weekend together and then go their separate ways.
Seven years later, Evan dropped out of Stanford and became a private investigator in Reno, so his father cut off the money train. Noelle moved to South Carolina where she works for a woman who rents out cottages along the coast. She also realized after she moved that she was pregnant from her weekend with Evan, but she never reached out to Evan to tell him he had a daughter. Of course, he discovers that fact when he shows up in South Carolina seeking out Noelle’s help to follow the lead he has on other potential abductions.
The end of the book is extremely confusing because so many characters had different identities, which we find out from The Collector about 20% before the end of the book. Evan’s family is actually from another country and was involved in a massacre of some young girls who were abducted. One of the girls was The Collector’s sister, and The Collector also takes on the part of Evan’s therapist after the abduction. There’s a jeweler and his son involved who help Evan, Noelle, and The Collector get all of the participants together and arrested, but the ending was so convoluted that I’m not sure what did and didn’t make sense. I’m not even sure if the ages of everyone line up!
And at the end of all of it, Evan and Noelle are in love with each other, bonded forever over their shared trauma. I know there are sick and twisted things that happen in the world, but this is a sick and twisted story of men who subjected people to horrible things as a form of gambling, and then we’re just supposed to relish in the happily ever after of the two main characters?
I just can’t. I would never recommend this book.
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