Books 2015 - Readers in Peril Challenge 2 - Bedlam by Ally Kennan

[byslantedlight]

Everyone says the old asylum is empty. The grounds are overgrown, the wards are deserted and the building is slowly crumbling to the ground. But Lexi is sure someone is there. Dogs are disappearing from the village. There's an unsettling howling in the night. And Lexi has a feeling... A feeling that someone is watching her.

I went out looking for RIP books last weekend, and despite going to two different bookshops (okay, they were both Waterstones, but the second one was a bigger version *g*), nothing really grabbed me. I don't want anything too horror-ish, or too spooky, and I was in the mood for something set in Victorian times, but couldn't see much that wasn't a later book in a series (has anyone read any of the Bryant and May books?), and... and so this was one of three books I took home. (See that? I can find no books that I want to buy, and still buy three... natural talent, that.)

I was a little dubious about the wisdom of Bedlam, because look at that cover! Screaming and mental asylums, and... and there I didn't want anything too horror-y. But it turned out to be not quite what I was expecting... It's actually a Young Adult book, for a start. That wasn't where I found it in the bookshop, and the blurb on the previous edition is different - it starts When 16-year-old Lexi is forced to move in with her estranged mother.... Instead I was told by The Guardian that it was a "Nail-chewing thriller". It's kind of a combination of both those things...

It starts with a stroppy teenager, progresses to a pretty horrible experience where she almost drowns in the flooded basement of an abandoned mental asylum, and then actually progresses to a really interesting plot and read. It turns out that the mental asylum wasn't the building's last incarnation, and what it was used for brings the story right up to date and knocks off much likelihood of cliche. I'm not going to say what it was here, but it made it much more interesting in many ways, and well-done the author.

The characters - always a sticking point with me - progressed through the book too, in the same sort of way, so that by the end they weren't at all the stereotypes that we'd thought they might be at first. There's Lexi, who starts off fretting that her hair straighteners don't work (at which point I rolled my eyes and begged for strength), her mum who abandoned her as a two year old, her dodgy father, her potentially dodgier brother, and the old friends that she misses and then the new friends that she makes. I actually felt for all of them by the end. My one complaint would be that the end actually came too quickly - I thought this had the potential to be fleshed out even more, and I'd like to have known more about most of the background characters.

The RIP element is interesting to think about. It started off with the title and the cover, which definitely had me eyeing it sideways and waiting for daylight (I'm a wimp *g*), and then the spooky-horror element built up... and then the worst of it resolved within the first chapter or so, and it became a much more awful-people kind of horror, somewhat abbreviated, I presume, for the teen-audience. But that worked for me, and I'm actually glad I read it, because it felt different, somehow.

And yeay - two books for RIP!

Peril the First: Read four books, any length, that you feel fit (the very broad definitions) of R.I.P. literature. It could be King or Conan Doyle, Penny or Poe, Chandler or Collins, Lovecraft or Leroux… or anyone in between.
1. Night of the Living Deed by E.J. Copperman
2. Bedlam by Ally Kennan

Comments

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Wow, you're tearing right through this, while I have only started on my first book. *g*

Bedlam sounds interesting, though I've found that I'm often disappointed by "young adult" books. Still, your review has me thinking, at least a bit, about reading it. That's always a good thing, right?

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Well, there was a weekend in there, and I have no one to play with but me (okay, that just sounds wrong...), so... reading!

It didn't look at all like a YA book when I picked it up off the shelf, there's nothing on the blurb to suggest that, and it just shouted spooky book to me. When I looked at the other editions on goodreads I actually recognised the covers as ones I'd passed by because I assumed they were spooky-books-for-teenagers. But this was good, and will teach me to judge books by their covers. Or teach publishers that different covers sell to different markets. Or something. *g*

And yes - definitely a good thing!