BREAK HER by B.G. HARLEN

Writing: 5 stars for the intense and intelligent writing.

Emotions: 5 stars – It brought extremely intense emotions.  I have never read anything like this.

Characters: 3 stars – Only the roles of Rapist and Victim feature in this story and we are given nothing on them, which yes served a purpose but left so many questions unanswered!

Overall story taking in my feelings of the ending: 3 stars

Content: Un-rateable:  Extremely graphic depictions of rape, sex, and violence that is not for the faint-hearted, and I struggled. This was a very difficult read for me.

 Do I subscribe to shock value?  Do you? 

I couldn’t help thinking about this question, as I read this story, freaking myself out by being unable to put it down as the obscene depravity actually caused me to feel sick to my stomach. Okay, I’ll be honest with you, I actually was sick….once.  Let’s get it all out there…this entire story is psychologically beyond anything I have ever known or read about rape. It scared me, I cried, it pulled me way past my boundary, my safety….right over the edge into the darkest place I have ever been thrown by a story. I questioned myself, I questioned issues raised in this book making something irrational make sense as in “what is the worst thing that could happen to me…how do I compare, and in relation to what and who?”

The writing is exceptional and intelligent. If this had not been the case I would never have finished it. The brilliance of the writing made me turn every page, much like an endurance test at times as I needed to know how this macabre storyline was going to end.  Don’t get me wrong I asked myself continuously why on earth I was still reading and at times I had to stop. However, at no point could I stop thinking about this story whilst reading, which made me pick it right back up. Do I fully understand why? No….no, I actually don’t.

As a reader, there is no gentle easing into the crux of the storyline. Our female lead wakes up with her rapist right from the get-go. In fact, she wakes up whilst in the act of being raped.

On the whole, your focus is solely and purely on the actions of the rapist and his victim over two days of hell on earth.

It’s a psychological battle of wills between a psychopath and his victim.  A victim; who questions with defiance yet with the respect necessary for her situation.

We do not get to know anything about the rapist and his victim other than the fact that he was hired to break her psychologically into nothing.  In relation to what they look like, their names or who or what they really are, we remain clueless.

We know them as the rapist/he and the victim/her. It is purely about the actions and the consequent feelings and emotions. The writing here is so cleverly played because it makes the actions super magnified; there is nothing else, we see and feel only that. The emotions intensified because your complete focus is taken up by that. Brutal!

The strength and the hope right at the core of our victim is staggering…she puts up a fight with her words; her cunning, her personality is her ultimate strength.  The back and forth; the battle of wills, to put it mildly, and for want of a more accurate expression, between the rapist and the victim blew my mind.

The rapist is arrogant, egotistical, and has no boundaries. He believes himself to be flawless, a rape artist. A mastermind in breaking and stripping his victim of her rational thought through physical pain extending into the core of her being. Destroying her hope and her self-preservation; driving her into a shadow and extreme soul destruction.

The ending was anticlimactic. The possible ending is what I kept on reading to know. I was left un-satisfied. A small victory sure, but I needed…no craved more. I needed more than one of my many questions answered. I did not feel satisfied; rather I felt cheated.

One word will haunt me for a long time to come:   Checkmate