The Merciless by Danielle Vega

Riley turns the knife so its blade catches the candlelight. "I read about this method of exorcism called bleeding," she explains. "If you harm the host body enough, it scares the demon away" (131).

It never occurred to me that Mean Girls meets American Psycho: The Book could be a thing or that it needed to be made, but apparently Danielle Vega thought so - much to my detriment. The first sign that something fishy was afoot is a "warning" in the inside cover of this book that says "For mature audiences only" which I sneered at, because the only other books I've seen with such a disclaimer are yaoi manga and Maya Banks's Sweet series.

"Go to hell, warning!" I thought to myself, blithely turning the page, where I promptly met Sofia, the sniveling new girl who, like the character in Mean Girls, ends up befriending the outcast girl. Sort of. But then, that same day, she also ends up befriending the popular girls, sort of, including Queen Bee. Regina. I mean, Riley.

The difference is that the "Plastics" in this book should be called the "Fanatics." They are all super religious and think that Brooklyn is possessed by a demon and needs to be exorcised.

Wut.

"Okay," I thought to myself. "That's weird. I hope this is going somewhere."

***WARNING: SPOILERS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF GRAPHIC CONTENT***

Well, it was going somewhere. Torture. Graphic descriptions of torture. Graphic descriptions of torture that are really not appropriate for teenagers. I know, I know, there's a warning in the front cover, but I thought it was some sort of weird shtick, like the pentacle and the inverted cross on the cover. I mean, isn't Razorbill Penguin's young adult and middle grade imprint? How graphic could this book possibly be? Well, LET ME JUST TELL YOU SOME OF THE THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN THIS BOOK. Someone gets a finger chopped off by a knife, somebody gets crucified, somebody gets flesh literally chewed off, somebody gets burned alive, not to mention the stabbings, attempted drownings, and various other things that happen in here. Things I totally did not sign up for.

Oh, and that ending - that ending made me so mad. Because it turns out Brooklyn was possessed by a demon after all, so the torture was totally justified. The sociopathic squad was doing the right thing. At that point I was wringing my hands and being like, "Am I being too puritanical? Is this actually a good book, despite the graphic content?" I hated AMERICAN PSYCHO after all, and couldn't get around the violence. But when I got to THE ENDING(!), I was like, "Nope, this is a terrible book and I am going to give it the bad review it deserves (but not the bad review it needs right now)."

This was a gross and awful book and actually slightly ruined what was otherwise a good day.

1 out of 5 stars