Slice of Cherry

I’ve always thought I had a pretty good sense of right and wrong. At least until I read Dia Reeves’s "Slice of Cherry." By the time I was halfway through the book I found myself rooting for coldblooded killers. Sure, they were guised as innocent, Texan, girl next-door types, but they’re killers nonetheless!

The book follows sisters Kit and Fancy Cordelle, who just so happen to be daughters of one of the most notorious serial killers in Texas. While he’s in prison on death row, the sisters find themselves possessing that same killer gene their daddy has, and well, they work their darndest to make their daddy proud.

Now normally it would be a no-brainer not to root for the serial killers to succeed in their particular line of work. But in "Slice of Cherry," Reeves writes so fantastically that you can’t help but relate to the psychotic protagonists. They have everyday teenage problems, i.e. boys, clothes, school, and yet they also have this itch to kill that they can’t help but scratch try as hard as they might. Reeves helps their relatable qualities along by coming up with some fantastical, potentially magical, ways for the girls to murder, making the whole process seem less gruesome and therefore, less terrible.

Either way, from now on, I’m going to think twice before falling for that endearing Texas drawl ever again.

This book was...weird. Incredibly weird. And quite creepy as well. Now, I suppose I should have known what I was getting myself into with the synopsis, but I was hoping there was more to the story (not to mention the cover which really drew me in), especially with all the talk of doors and other worlds. Sadly, it wasn't what I was hoping for.

This book was so full of blood and gore, I might as well have only spent 2 hours watching a slasher movie and gotten the same effect. Sure, there was a little bit about the sisters' relationship with each other and their relationships by other people, but that was a little hard to get into amidst all the blood. Did I mention there was a LOT of blood?

Besides all the gore, the writing didn't impress me all that much. I found myself feeling lost a few times simply because things were introduced but not explained. Sometimes it felt like I was just expected to know what someone's expression looked like or what something specific to that world meant automatically. It also felt like some situations just popped up out of nowhere. The transitions were greatly lacking, in my opinion.

Final thoughts: This book was definitely not my taste. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone either. I finished expecting something different to happen, but nothing ever did. The moral here would likely be "don't expect something different from a synopsis that tells you something directly."

I strongly suggest this book. The twisted characters keep you tied up throughout the entire novel, and the fact that the sisters are daughters of an imfamous killer, only adds to the spine-chilling effect of Dia Reeves's creatively written book.