Run
Author: Gregg Olsen
Publication Date: May 1st 2014
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Publisher: Hot Key Books
~A copy as provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~
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What if you discovered that everything you thought you knew about yourself was a lie? Rylee is fifteen. She comes home from school one afternoon to find the most shocking thing possible - her father dead, with a knife through his heart, and a key clutched in his hand. Her mother's purse is on the counter, but she appears to be long gone. A message in blood is written on the floor... RUN.
With her brother in tow, Rylee begins a dark journey, one that will uncover horrific and chilling crimes and lead her to an unexpected and gruesome discovery about her real father and what - or who - is behind his insatiable desire to kill. By the journey's end Rylee's childhood is a long way behind her...
RUN is the first title in the new Vengeance series, following Rylee as she begins to piece together the story of her life and to avenge unpunished crimes - starting with her own. This is DEXTER with a feisty female protagonist unlike any other in contemporary young adult fiction
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Run, is a special one my friends. You know I'm weird, right?
You know I like serial killer books, right? You know I loved Dear Killer for
that very reason, right? Don't judge. ;) This book was made for me.
Whereas Dear Killer was set in the mind-set of a teenage
serial killer, it wasn't quite as disturbing as Run. I know. Hard to believe. Being in a teenage serial killers head,
what's worse or creepier than that? Run. That's what. It's also really
inappropriate to say I laughed . (But I'll get to that reason later, because
you know, I don't make it a habit to laugh at murder books. I'm not that weird.)Rylee has been on the run with her parents (and later on, brother) for most of her life, it's pretty much all she's known, and though she doesn't know much about why, she just knows that she's here one place, then there the next. To avoid being caught, the family has a very important system. Be ready at all times. Never plan ahead. Nobody can follow you if you yourself don't know where you're going. You leave no trace. Trust no one. Don't get attached.
When Rylee's brother calls for her and she comes down to
find her father dead and her mother missing- the word Run written from her
father's blood on the floor. She does.
Rylee follows the rules.
She also breaks one of them.
Run is hard to review, and not because it's short but
because if I say one thing wrong, it'll spoil it all. Dominos. It's dominos. Nobody
likes to set them off. But I will say there's a bunch of holy shit in there, I even said it out loud a few times. With
people in the room. Don't do that. It's also dark and slightly twisted, okay, a
whole lot of twisted and Rylee, on a psychological aspect is pretty interesting
to dissect. She's a tough character, and she's had to be. She's smart and a
little devious, she knows something's not right about their lives, and she
doesn't believe what her mother's told her but she goes with it. She's pretty
cold in the beginning, and everything seemed a little methodical but once it
gets going you'll be addicted.
You'll never completely warm to Rylee, it's pretty hard to,
like I said she's cold in the beginning, doing what she's told and trying to
reign in her emotions, but once she learns out the truth, she's angry, hurt,
and that ignites her want for revenge. You
might not warm to her but you will understand her, on whatever level. She goes
where nobody wants to go, she's a part of something nobody ever wants to be a
part of and she also does what every one of us would love to do to someone as
evil as that. And she's rational about it. She has a personal vengeance to it,
but she also has this underlying need to
do what she did. She's been lied to her whole life, everything she thought she
knew isn't what it was supposed to be, even the people she thought she knew.
She doesn't even know who she is herself. She's trying to use what she has to
do for good. To even the score. Which blurs the lines between right and wrong.
Is an eye for an eye ever right? Is something unspeakable to someone that's
evil, make it right?
And that rule that she broke? You'll have to find out.
That thing that had me laughing
inappropriately? It's not exactly a spoiler, but I'll hide it anyway... (You
know when you were like twelve and someone says penis in class and all the boys
find it funny? I kind of felt like that because there's this bit Rylee shoots
the killers penis off. Just ouch.)
Run is a
quick and addictive read with a story that's dark and twisted with a lot of
lies and secrets that'll shock you, but it's also about the lengths people can
go to, to survive. Run pushes boundaries and it's not afraid to do so.
