I am back with another book review, today it is The Unwanted by Jean Nicole Rivers. Thank you so much to the author for sending me an e-copy of this book for an honest review. As always, all opinions are my own.
Before I get too far into this review, or even start it really, I will say that I am new to the horror genre. I've pretty much steered clear, mainly because I'm a bit of a scaredy cat. That I because I'm working throughout the summer, most of the time I get to read is from about 8pm to whenever I fall asleep, around midnight. So I'm sitting by myself, in my room, sometimes with the lights off (if I'm reading an ebook), reading. It's not exactly prime conditions to read books that keep you awake at night, i.e. horror. I've just recently decided to broaden my horizons, step outside my comfort zone, and read some horror books.
On that note, for the most part, this book wasn't too scary for me to handle. I was reading in the above conditions, and I was doing good, and then I got to a point where I couldn't read it at night anymore so I put it down. Once I picked it up again the next day though (a little earlier), I was good to go. If you are looking for a creepy book where you never really know what's going on, this is the book for you.
I don't know if I would say that the narrative of this book is unreliable, its third person, but limited to Blaire, an American teacher's POV. Both she and a fellow American, a nurse named Travis have travelled to a tiny European town to help volunteer at an orphanage of sorts. This is where things get a little bit hazy. Everyone in the town kind of feels weird about the orphanage, where the "unwanted" children are sent, but no one really knows what happens there, or why it's so widely rumoured. The workers themselves are mysterious, you as a reader, as well as Blaire and Travis never really know who to trust.
There's just a lot of weird stuff happening with the kids at this place. They are considered "unwanted" by their families, instead of being orphaned 'traditionally,' so to speak. One girls father blindfolded her and dropped her off after he became worried of her mental instability. Many of the children have some sort of mental illness, or have developed one from being in the house. Some have physical illnesses, brittle bone disease, amplified by the underfunded home's lack of nutritious meals or real medical care, aside from a few bandages and some 'mild tranquilizers,' cerebral palsy, as well as just basic malnutrition. As a result, especially of the mental illnesses, the children are quite strange. Once I got more into the story, the kids were kind of what I was expecting of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children before I read it. Like if Peregrine and the kids went off the deep end, that would be this book.
As details got clearer, everything got creepier. They wanted to leave, but a snow storm snowed them in for at least a couple of days. The townies were getting upset with Blaire for snooping around in the home's history. This book just overall, creeped me out. I could really see what was happening in the story, and I really felt for the characters.
I will also say that even though this book is technically book number two in the series, you can definitely read it as a standalone. I had no prior knowledge of the story before, in book one, and I was able to follow it very easily. I'm not too sure, but I think it might be more about Blaire's past.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It had just enough creepiness to get my feet wet in the horror genre, while still keeping me interested in the story.