The Grownup

Summary

It is a curiosity-raising and attention grabbing book that got me hooked from the beginning until the end. The first two opening lines are as follows:

“I didn’t stop giving hand jobs because I wasn’t good at it. I stopped giving jobs because I was the best at it.”

This book is originally a part of a larger collection of short stories  and was later released as a standalone book.

The grownup is a psychological thriller about a woman (unnamed narrator) who was raised as a scam artist, later moved to become a psychic who just tells people what they want to hear. A rich woman (Susan Burke) in distress came to see her, the perfect victim where she can milk money and get introduced to other rich women who needed help. Susan needed help desperately, and she believed that there is something evil in their house which is affecting the behavior of her teenage stepson. The narrator agrees to help and to visit Susan’s house in order to cleanse it. At the end, it became a battle of who’s telling the truth and who’s pretending and who’s not. Is the house really haunted? The predator now becomes the prey.

A good and creepy 64-page book, I totally recommend it.

Cons:

I thought that the ending could have been better, rather than revealing everything at once which to me was overwhelming.

Pros:

I especially enjoyed the writing style and the twists from the story.

Quote:

“Empathetic silence is one of the most underused weapons in the world.”