The Wild, K. Webster
Rating: 1 “I’ll Never Get Those Hours Back” Star
Publisher: K. Webster
Genre: Incestuous ‘Romance’
Tags: Child Abuse & Molestation, Contemporary, Father/Daughter, Incest, Murder, Obsession, On Page Sexual Assault, Other Violence, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex
Reviewer: Cindi
Purchase At: Smashwords
This review is full of spoilers. If you want to be surprised when (if) you read The Wild, don’t read this review. It is literally nothing but one big spoiler.
Blurb –
I brought them to the wilderness because we couldn’t cope with our reality.
The plan was to make a new life that didn’t include heartache.
No people. No technology. No interference.
Just us.
A chance to piece together what was broken.
But the wilderness is untamed and harsh.
Brutal and unforgiving.
It doesn’t give a damn about your feelings.
Tragedy lives there too.
No escaping the truths that won’t let you go.
All you can do is survive where love, no matter how beastly, is the only thing you can truly count on.
Confusing. Wrong. Twisted. Beautiful. Sick.
Love is wild.
And we’re going to set it free.
WARNING:
The Wild is an extremely taboo story. Most will find that the themes in this book will make you incredibly uncomfortable or maybe even offend you. This book is only for the brave, the open-minded, and the ones who crave love in even the most dismal of situations. Extreme sexual themes and violence in certain scenes, which could trigger emotional distress, are found in this story. If you are sensitive to heavy taboo themes, then this story is not for you.
Seriously, you’ve been warned.
Don’t say I didn’t try.
You’re probably going to cringe many, many, many times.
Even if you’re on the fence, it’s probably not a good idea to proceed.
However, if you’re intrigued and fearless and kind of sort of trust me, then carry on. This book is for you.
Review –
You know what’s genius? Write a book about incest. Add a bunch of trigger and other warnings in the blurb and front of book – to be read only by the brave. Make it sound so taboo that it’s banned by Amazon so the only place you can buy the e-book is on Smashwords where the reader can’t get a refund if the book sucks. People will be ‘scandalized’ by the so-called controversial book and write reviews about it like I’m doing here. Others will read the reviews and want to know what the big deal is and why it’s so taboo. Charge $3.99 for said sucky book and make a killing. Freaking brilliant.
That was sarcasm in case you missed it. Hell, the entire review is sarcasm. Keep that in mind if you read any further.
I can’t get the hours I spent reading this or my $3.99 back. That’s okay. I was one of those who figured, what the hell? so I got what I deserved.
I’m no stranger to taboo books. I’ve read pretty much everything without so much as a blink. I don’t always agree with what I’m reading about. If I did, I’d probably not read much. I’m a horror reader so there you go. The Wild is about father/daughter incest. While the author (I’m assuming) tries to lead the reader to believe it’s a Cathy/Christopher type thing like Flowers in the Attic, it’s not. It’s about as far from that type of scenario as it can get.
I’m getting ahead of myself but I do need to state something clearly before I continue. The father/daughter incest, while effed up, is not what made me angry about this book. To each their own, I suppose. It was other stuff that had me wanting to throw my Kindle and cursing myself for wasting the time and money on this book.
Reed, almost 40, and his wife, Sabrina, had twins – Andrew and Devon – until six years ago when the little boy died from a horrific accident. They were ten at the time. His death sent the family into a downward spiral, which is understandable. Sabrina spends most of her time in bed dealing with depression, leaving Reed to help Devon deal with the death of her brother. It’s heartbreaking.
Reed is a multimillionaire businessman. His being a millionaire has zero bearing on anything that happens in the story at all. If anything it makes his decisions as the so-called leader of the family sound more stupid. He liquidated all his assets and bought a bunch of land in the Alaskan wilderness, believing that getting away from their fancy home and starting all over again would help the family finally be able to move on without Andrew. Both twins have nicknames. Andrew’s is Rowdy and Devon’s is Pip. Trust me when I say that if you read this you’ll be cursing the name Pip long before it’s over.
Devon is allowed to graduate high school two years early so she can take off to parts unknown with her parents. Parts unknown where there’s zero cell reception, no WiFi, zero technology or even indoor plumbing or electricity, and zero ways to contact the outside world.
What sixteen-year-old girl would readily give all that up? None that I know.
Reed and Devon have always been close. They’ve had to be really because Sabrina has been an absent parent. Sabrina was something else. I get the depression. I don’t get a lot of other things that happened with her. She dies very early in the book and I have to say I wasn’t upset about it. What got me was how she died. They’d finally made it with their RV and trailer to their plot of land in the boonies. The night they set up camp there’s this really bad storm. 16-year-old Devon can’t handle the sound of rain outside so she crawls into bed between her parents. While there her dad mistakes her for Sabrina and fingers her in his sleep. He freaks when he wakes up and discovers what he’d done but no biggie because within seconds the RV is falling off the cliff and he’s knocked out. Only when he comes to does he discover that his daughter is badly injured and his wife of many years is dead. No, not just dead. She’s hanging at an awkward angle from a tree jutting from the cliff.
I really didn’t need that visual and I’m guessing y’all didn’t either. Sorry. 🙂
They manage to get her down from the tree and put her in the river to float away so they won’t have to bury her. There is zero mourning of the mother and wife in the entire book. Nada. None. Zip!
Of course, we know what’s going to happen next. Daddy and daughter begin a sexual relationship. We’re not talking weeks or months later. We’re talking like Bam! Seriously. It becomes obvious to the reader that the want for sex with the other didn’t just start. It started LONG before they ever made the trek to the wilderness of Alaska while the mother was still alive and well. Parts of that were disturbing. Anyone with eyes would know that Reed was lusting after his child in the way he looked at her and the touches that weren’t appropriate from a father.
When they have sex the first time Devon is still a virgin. The pain is intense, as expected, but then what do you know? She has mind blowing orgasms that go on for days! Okay, maybe not days, but she has mind blowing orgasms during the first time she has sex and after that she can’t get enough of Daddy, I mean, REED.
When the sexual relationship gets going it’s, “Call me Reed cuz while I want to be your daddy I don’t want to be your daddy when we’re having taboo sex because it’s too weird.”
You know, because sex with your daughter isn’t weird at all.
There’s not just sex between these two. There’s serious obsession. What they’re doing is already (obviously) illegal but the obsession crosses the line to abuse, both physical and emotional, by Reed. As the father he makes sure Devon damn sure knows her place. Because she’s brainwashed by ‘daddy’ she goes along with everything because he lurves her and he can’t blah, blah, blah live without her.
They’re building a cabin together and creating a home for them and their future babies. Yep, I said babies. Because every couple in the middle of nowhere who have absolutely zero contact with the outside world should be bringing a little one or little ones into the world, right? It doesn’t matter that there’s no doctor or medical supplies (other than an old first aid kit) or even healthy food for the future mama to eat for her child. Oh, no, a child is needed to make their little family complete.
Say it with me now, Aww!
She gets pregnant and the supposed ‘smart for her age’ Devon doesn’t stop to think that babies created as a result of incest could be born with physical problems. Doesn’t matter. When she gets pregnant she and her father are thrilled over it.
You know, he’s thrilled that his daughter slash lover is carrying his child AND grandchild.
Ew!
I know, right?
Reed also proposes to his daughter. What does he give her for a ring, you ask? Well, of course, it’s the one he took off his dead wife’s finger because he knows she’d want Devon to have it. Yeah, I’m thinking no because of the whole her husband is having sex with her daughter thing.
Moving on.
Then Devon miscarries.
The two are minding their own business inside their tiny cabin when three ‘inbred freaks’ (not my words) storm in without warning. One holds Reed at knife point while the other two brutally beat and rape Devon, both vaginally and anally, while Reed is forced to watch. Devon loses the baby as a result of the rapes and beating.
This is when I got really disturbed. If you’ve read this far – and bless your heart if you have – you’re probably wondering, “She’s only NOW getting disturbed?” Well, yeah. The other stuff was just poor writing, an obsessive man, horribly written sex scenes, and a whiny teenager.
This is something all together different.
Rape is not sexy. It’s not entertaining. Neither is miscarriage. The way both were portrayed as something that can be fixed later by sex seriously pissed me off.
Two weeks after the attack and miscarriage Devon and her father have sex. I know everybody recovers differently. I totally get that. What I don’t get is her father taking her as brutally – you know, to make her feel better – as the guys who’d raped her. This was okay? No, it wasn’t. He wasn’t gentle. He didn’t console her or use soft words. He just took her. Hard.
That’s not the only time he does that. Much later, when she’s pregnant again and ready to pop (so to speak), she finds out a family secret and runs out into the night instead of talking to Reed about it. He, of course, chases her down. She’s over nine months pregnant. She’s obviously in labor. She’s screaming in pain at the same time she’s screaming, “I hate you!” (because that’s so mature… she does it throughout the book) at her dad. He catches up with her and literally rips her dress off and takes her hard. She fights him as hard as she can but he doesn’t care. She’s still screaming that she hates him, she’s in pain (labor, remember?) and dear old daddy is raping her. According to him – and her later – he was just claiming her because he lurves her so much.
Dear Lord.
Now let’s get to the family secret, shall we? Not the, “I brought my daughter out in the middle of nowhere to have daily sex with her,” secret. It was the, “You and your twin brother were adopted by your mother and me when you were both two,” secret.
You’d think she’d be at least maybe a little relieved because then she wouldn’t be having sex – and children – with her biological father. Sure, it’s fucked up, but they aren’t really related through blood, you know? Oh, no. She goes absolutely ballistic and takes off into the woods after dark – that are full of bears, I might add – and puts herself and her unborn child in danger. This is when Reed rapes her in the woods while she’s in labor.
“Even when she was sick to fucking death worried over incest related problems, I couldn’t tell her. This secret was worse than a little fear over birth defects. This secret had the potential to destroy her.”
Really, dude? She worried herself sick through both pregnancies after finally figuring out that children born as a result of incest could be born with birth defects. She finds out she and Andrew were adopted – and I’m not making light of that in any way – and it’s worse than the other stuff? However, I’m thinking the ‘getting pregnant with who I thought was my biological father’s children’ is a tad disturbing in itself.
But he got away with not telling her because the opportunity never came up to do a pinky promise. If Daddy does the pinky promise (it’s done ad nauseam in the book) then he means it. If he doesn’t? Well, then Daddy has a right to go back on his word.
Shoot.
Me
Now!
What else? You know, since I haven’t already written a book here myself. *snort*
Reed is physically abusive, as I’ve said. Because he’s Devon’s father he feels it’s okay to spank her so hard and for so long that she’s throwing up. You know, to teach her a lesson. This happens a lot.
There are lots of flashbacks by both characters. These flashbacks show clearly that there was always an improper thing going on between them even if they’d not acted on it yet.
Mom needed therapy, not moved to the middle of nowhere. But then again, there were no tears shed when she died so I’m guessing Reed and Devon didn’t much care about getting her help when she was alive. Don’t get me wrong, Sabrina had bigger issues that made me despise her on the first page, but that doesn’t excuse the way the father and daughter didn’t give a flying flip when she was killed.
I could totally go on – this is just the tip of the iceberg – but I’m stopping here. This is by far one of the worst books I’ve ever read in my life and I’ve read some doozies.
This is not romance. This is about a sick pervert with a major obsession and a brainwashed teenager who obviously needs professional help. I’ve read a lot of reviews since I finished this book. I don’t understand how even one person can say this is a sweet romance between these two characters.
It’s disturbing. It’s wrong. I can’t remember a couple I disliked as much as I did these two. I almost DNF’d so many times but I forced my way through it. I deserve chocolate and alcohol after this.
I will not be reading anything else by this author.
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I’m the first to admit I jump on the crazytrain of messed-up reading, and I’ll proudly fly my own freak flag, but I prefer my books to have a naturally fucked up progression – yes, they do exist. I don’t like reading storylines where events and moments are purely thrown in for shock value, especially after taunting readers about the ability to handle its content. Authors give warning tags about content but they don’t call reader’s ability to handle things into question, as is the case with this book – “I know! Let’s make readers seem like wimps if they… Read more »
Thanks, Kazza. I only pulled a few of the quotes. You would be shocked if you read some of the others. The whole book is warped. I found absolutely nothing sexy about any of it. It was about an obsessive father who wanted who he wanted, the rest of the world be damned. I’m all for knowing what I’m getting myself into when I buy a book. There are trigger warnings and there’s what’s all over the place for this book. It was done purely for shock value and it’s apparently working because people all over my Goodreads page are… Read more »
Sounds pretty fucked up Cindy, but thanks for the solid review. I’ve been working my way through some of your (both your) books of the years past. Won’t be seeing this one on any lists.
Thank you, Jude. I read it to see what the hype was about. I know some people are enjoying it but I personally can’t recommend it to anybody.