A Veritable Household Pet - Review

Author: Viggy Parr Hampton

Genre: Fiction

Format: Library Book

Pages: 336

I cannot tell a lie, I checked this book out a hundred percent because of the cover. It was labeled as horror, and there were lobotomy tools on the cover. So, this book had my attention. Add to the fact that another reader, Mother of Horror, gave this book a good rating. It was enough to push this book to the top of the pile. The very top of the pile. It added to the positive that this was written in two different voices: the sister who had the lobotomy and the sister who had taken care of the other.

The biggest downside of this book is feel like it was marketed as something it isn't. Which isn't the author's fault. It might even be my fault. Because I was sold a book that was a claustrophobic horror story about a young woman trapped in her own head, and her sister was forced to take care of her. It was a little of that, but not really. Which maybe that was a good thing because if I'd have known what I was getting into, I might not have picked up this book. Because it's not my usual type of read.

Is it horror? Yeah, kinda, not the scare your socks off or gross you out kind of horror. It's the quiet kind when you know exactly what's going to happen, just when or how. You know how Darla's story will end, but not if that's how the book is going to end. It's also probably the saddest book I'll read this year. Because both Darla's and Elle's stories broke my heart. For two entirely different reasons. Darla's story is about being sick with parents and a world that didn't know how to help her. So she was the victim of bad medicine. And Elle is a victim of her circumstances. It's not hard to understand why she wanted to get away, or why she did the things she did.

This book is quiet. That's the best way I can think to describe it. Nothing jumps out of you because Darla cannot have big emotions. She can just give facts about everything that happened to her because she lost the ability to have any kind of large emotions, and Elle... Well, some of her parts are loud but also full of emotions that pull at your heart. 

The entire book is sad, and there's not really a happy moment for three hundred plus pages. It made it hard to read because it just broke my heart. After about fifty pages, I needed break, but I kept coming back to this book. Even now, I don't know if I'm doing this book any justice because it is a beautiful, heartbreaking story. I just don't know if I'm doing the job of selling it as such. But it is a book I feel a lot of people would like to read. I think horror readers would find it interesting, and so would historical fiction. Even people who read books on the history of medicine might find it interesting. 

It's such a strange little book, but it was really good. Different from what I usually read, but I'm glad I gave this one a chance.

HAPPY READING!!