When Ellis Earnshaw and Heathan James met as children, they couldn’t have been more different. Ellis was loud and beautiful – all blond hair, bright laughs and smiles. Heathan was dark and brooding, and obsessed with watching things die.The pair forged an unlikely friendship, unique and strange. Until they were ripped apart by the sick cruelty of others, separated for years, both locked in a … a perpetual hell.
Eleven years later, Heathan is back for his girl. Back from a place from which he thought there was no return. Back to seek revenge on those who wronged them.
Time has made Heathan’s soul darker, polluted with hatred and the thirst for blood.
Time has made Ellis a shell of her former self, a little girl lost in the vastness of her pain.
As Heathan pulls Ellis out of her mental prison, reviving the essence of who she once was, down the rabbit hole they will go.
With malice in their hearts and vengeance in their veins, they will seek out the ones who hurt and destroyed them.
One at a time.
Each one more deadly than the last.
Tick Tock.
Dark Contemporary Romance. Contains explicit sexual situations, violence, disturbingly sensitive and taboo subjects, offensive language and very mature topics. Recommended for ages 18 and over.
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“Cannot imagine your life without her in it? Would kill if anyone hurt her? Would die if you ever lost her? Can’t breathe or sleep without seeing her face? Love, I thought. A word so alien to my vocabulary, yet it seemed I had lived with it in me since the age of ten. Love. Not deep enough to describe my feelings for Dolly. But it would have to do. I had no other as mighty or as strong.”
So, Tillie told us this book was super dark, and … whew! This review is probably one of the hardest I’ve ever had to write, because I’m not sure how to say everything I need to say without spoiling anything. These two characters — a little crazy? Sure. But did this crazy come to them without reason — NO.
Ellis & Heathen came together in life unexpectedly. Heathen arrived in Ellis’s world & from there they forged a friendship so tight, that no one else was allowed in. Both of them had suffered through traumatic events, but their world was about to change even more.
I wish I could say so much more about this, but I’m too afraid that I’ll give something away. This is one of the most creative, mind blowing stories I have read this year. Honestly, I’m not sure how this could be topped. It is dark, there are some very sensitive & controversial ideas expressed, and there are some parts of this that are honestly … just plain gruesome. But every bit of it is a story worth reading.
The best part, for me, was juxtaposing Ellis & Heathen’s story against a classic story. There were so many clever connections made! Also, the fact that Heathen is willing to do ANYTHING for Ellis, even indulge her fantasy, made this story beautiful, even in the midst of a bit of crazy-tragic-terrifying events.
I will advise, though, that if you have some delicate sensibilities, then this book may not be for you. There is a LOT here that could trigger some difficult memories, or could raise your hackles in protest against how wrong they are. But, if you dare to read this story, you will most likely be pulled down the rabbit hole with the rest of us, and find a glimmer of beauty in this bloody mess.
“It’s a hard world for little things.”
” You know, when you’re little, you have more endurance than God is ever to grant you again. Children are man at his strongest. They abide.” – Rachel Cooper, “The Night of the Hunter”(1955)
Be prepared to be changed by reading this book. I was. The book sparkles like a illuminated prism in the darkness. It has many sides and many faces. It is gripping in its depiction of violence and one the most difficult depictions of violence to read about is the sadistic rape of children. Yet, the scenes are not written for gratuitous effect nor are they written to simply shock us. This author has so much to say to the reader. As we listen, we ourselves are changed for the better having grown in understanding of things we have heretofore not considered.
The familiar classic, Alice in Wonderland, written under the nom de plume, Lewis Carroll can be interpreted as a child’s eye view of the world as they embark on their journey to adulthood. This is one interpretation of many. It’s the kind of fantastical tale whose characters resemble people in our own lives. The story can be many things to many people. It is a story that became a central theme in the heartbreaking yet curiously redemptive story of our main protagonists-Rabbit and Dolly.
We first meet Heathen James as child as Ellis Earnshaw discovers the startlingly beautiful little boy all in black dressed in a waistcoat of all things. Then and there the wings of a butterfly move (“The Butterfly Effect”) and their entire future is altered. They rename each other. Heathen is named Rabbit from Ellis’ favorite book read to her by her Mum before she died. Heathen names her Dolly as she is dressed and looks just like her “Alice in Wonderland” doll.
Heathen’s mother was afraid of her own son. Why? She dropped him off to live with his father who is caretaker on the Earnshaw estate. He has piercing gray eyes that flash menacing, silencing murderous looks. No one can touch him. He has been dropped into a nest of vipers who kill his father so that they can take their sick, perverted pleasure from a lost little boy. Rabbit has a broken pocket watch that keeps perfect time for both Dolly and him. “ Tick tock , tick tock , tick tock . . . ”
As he is raped, he focuses on his watch. “ Tick tock , tick tock , tick tock . . . ”
Dolly is a precious innocent trapped on this sprawling estate. She lives in her fantastical tea parties. She does not go to school. She is an exceptionally pretty child. Her father and “uncles” are lying in wait until she turns that ripe age of ten. With the heart of an expectant innocent child, she is excited about her birthday and the surprises her father promised her. Heathen stayed and endured the abuse visited upon him because he felt if these perverts had him, they would leave little Dolly alone. His comfort came at night in the arms of this sweet innocent little girl.
We read with horror at Dolly’s fate on this birthday. Her Rabbit without hesitation brutally dispatches the fiend who stole this little girl’s innocence and her virginity. This pervert won the right to her virginity off her father in a card game. Heathen is then locked away at 12 years old in the rich man’s private prison from hell with other psychopathic enemies of these perverted business men. It is there that Rabbit grows up in the dark under the tutelage of “sick f@@@s”. Mercifully, his cellmates protect him from further sexual abuse rampant in this private hell of a prison and he learns… useful skills. The entire time, his one thought is to return to and rescue his “Dolly”.
Rabbit returns to his Dolly but is he too late? Has she been irrevocably broken? As Rabbit takes her to “Wonderland”, the reader will be challenged to determine the answer to just this question. The two embark on a phantasmagorical avenging killing spree described in bloody detail after bloody detail. Their sex play together for all its bizarre kink on display becomes a slow process of healing for them. But will they ever be able to assimilate in society and finally live in peace loving each other?
As a reader experiencing this bloody, often macabre journey, I felt no rush to judgement about the violence. In fact, it was cathartic for me so that I could release all the pain which I felt in my heart for these children. In their horror show costumes they became beautiful in my mind’s eye. The prick of conscience I had over the collateral damage of killing a bodyguard her or there vaporized in the knowledge that these abusers continued their sick abuse of children and their body guards or anyone associated with them knew about this and kept silent. They became guilty and convicted in my heart.
The twinge of guilt I felt in the enjoyment of their rough sex play also disappeared in the knowledge that this was if not redeeming love, then love that salvaged the remains of a Rabbit and Dolly’s person hood forged in abuse, loss and darkness. It was their one bright beautiful untouched light inside of themselves that they saved for each other. If anyone earned the right to express their consensual, off-beat, kinky albeit even bloody sexuality with each other, these two characters earned it.
I learned that sometimes darkness needs to be battled where it is at, in the darkness with a necessary black heart and who am I to judge this black heart? When I felt nothing but love, understanding and compassion for these two children who simply “abided” their torment. As adults they avenged the losses they suffered at the hands of cruel predators to an end where:
“There was no Rabbit without Dolly. There was no Dolly without Rabbit.” – Rabbit