A Buried Review for "Staked!"

While searching for a particular meme on social media, this post popped up.

My BryonySeries super fan left this review for Staked! on my Facebook timeline in 2015, which is different from the two separate reviews she wrote for Amazon and Goodreads.

I'm still awed that she's written several reviews just for this one book which was, as far as I know, still her most favorite book in the entire BryonySeries.

OK, here's the rest of my review - the part that didn't make the cut.

In my original review, I had focused more on family dynamics - how the family was seemingly normal - the death of a parent, resenting a stepparent, even the deep dark secrets and skeletons in the closet (so to speak). The author presented the family as seemingly normal - right down to John-Peter's paper route and helping out at the family business and then POW - creating a surreality in which absolutely nothing was as it seemed - a left hook to the reader's jaw. 

There was the budding awareness in John-Peter of his parents sexuality as he watched Kellen nuzzle Melissa's neck - again not what it appeared to be, but a tie to the normal. There was the Freudian idea of the son competing with the father, and ultimately winning.

When I first "met" John-Peter in "Visage," I got a "Rosemary's Baby" premonition - that he was a creepy troll of a child. In "Staked," the author forced a 180 turn, with John Peter as a very likable adolescent. And though he seemed completely human and normal, I knew that something was up with the splinters, his need to drink gallons of water and eat bushels of food. Through John-Peter, I sort of relived some of my own adolescent fears and failures and relived my fear of being ridiculed for being different.  

The princess in John-Peter's mirror - his secret from even his dearest friend - unnerved me. Who was this girl? Why did John-Peter obsess about saving her - and saving her from what? There is something so very frightening about the girl in the mirror. In the end, you realize you knew it wasn't Rapunzel.

The author touches on the good/evil side of the human personality - giving characters ample opportunity to redeem themselves for less-than-noble acts. Even the characters who were basically good committed heinous acts - and those who were pegged evil - often committed acts of kindness. Nothing was ever black and white in the series. I'd say I enjoyed the "shades of gray," but that was a different series entirely - one I don't plan to read.

The author touches on friendships - who you can trust, who you can't trust. Who will betray you and who will stand by you, no matter what. Many of us remember our best friends - those who could seemingly read our thoughts. There were so many images in the book of bonds that were thicker than blood. By the end of the book, you knew Karla would never be the same.

Speaking of Jungian psychology, perhaps the most baffling and terrifying part of "Staked" was learning that an entire world was the result of Ed Calkins' imagination. And you question, who is real? Who is not real? Was the entire story the product of Ed Calkins' imagination... or perhaps the tale was born in a dream Melissa had while napping. Was John-Peter ever real? What about John Simons? And on and on.