ARC Book Review: Lucretia & The Kroons

Book Title: Lucretia & The Kroons
Author: Victor LaValle

Publisher: Spiegel & Grau via Random House Digital
Format: ebook
Genre: Adult Fiction

Cost: $0.99

Pages: 100

How I got it: Publisher via NetGalley

My Rating:★★★1/2
Erotica Rating: N/A
Synopsis:

From one of the most acclaimed young writers of fiction in America today comes a fast-paced and fantastical novella about a young girl's journey into a dark netherworld to find her missing best friend. This eBook edition contains an exclusive excerpt from Victor LaValle's new novel The Devil in Silver, about which Gary Shteyngart raves, "Literary horror just found a new master." Lucretia's best friend and upstairs neighbor Sunny-a sweet pitbull of a kid, even as she struggles with a mysterious illness-has gone missing. The only way to get her back is for Lucretia to climb the rickety fire escape of their Queens tenement and crawl through the window of apartment 6D, portal to a vast shadowland of missing kids ruled by a nightmarish family of mutants whose designs on the children are unknown. Her search for Sunny takes Lucretia through a dark fantasyland where she finds lush forests growing from concrete, pigeon-winged rodents, and haunted playgrounds. Her quest ultimately forces her to confront the most frightening specter of all: losing, forever, the thing you love the most. Lucretia and the Kroons is a dazzlingly imaginative adventure story and a moving exploration of the power of friendship and the terror of loss. This all-new novella serves as the perfect companion piece to The Devil in Silver, a thrillingly suspenseful work of literary horror that continues the story of Lucretia.

My Review:

"Being young doesn't protect you, horrors come for kids, too"

It took forever to get to this book, and it's one of the few novellas I have read that went as fast as it did.  I've never read this author before, so his writing style was new to me. The story just jumped right into it, now pretense or build up, it just went right to it.

Now this is a very different kind of book for me, a bit of a magical realism, yet very different.  Loochie is a kid who doesn't realize that the world is kind of harsh; her best friend was sick from leukaemia and dying and she still doesn't understand just how bad the disease is.  When her older brother visits just before her friend comes over to celebrate her birthday, he shares with her the story of the Kroons as a way to scare her about being alone in the house for the first time by herself.

I was kind of confused reading this book, what would have happened if her brother didn't tell her about the Kroons?? How would have this worked out?? How comes she didn't hear the sirens and think anything about it?? I knew immediately what was wrong, but she was completely clueless.

I felt so bad for her knowing what was going on and she didn't know.  Then the Kroons happened and I was just engrossed in the story. Holy Crap, I just...WOW.  What a story. I was still confused reading it, the main thing that stuck out to me was the fact that if her brother didn't tell her this story about the Kroons would the rest of it happen??

It's an okay story, engaging while you're reading it. The ending didn't make any sense, why not say ok maybe I was dreaming; but she refused to back down even when it meant she was going to get into trouble.

Enjoy while reading, he's an interesting author.

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***FTC Rules require I state that I received this as a review copy from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review****