Audiobook Review: Doll House by John Hunt
Doll House
Series: Doll House #1
Author: John Hunt
Narrator: Gregory Walston
Published: April 28, 2017
Audiobook: 7 hours 57 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: November 14-18, 2024
Jessica’s Rating: 3.5 stars
Book Description:
“All you girls were less than human. Play things in a twisted doll house.”
Olivia is taken from the sidewalk near her college and thrown into a van. Her captors, who she soon discovers are vile, sadistic monsters, abuse her immediately, both mentally and physically. Then she is taken into a house, into a locked room, where everything is cotton candy pink. The pink furniture is designed with rounded edges and corners bolted to the floor, and the seams at the bolts melted. This is where the nightmare begins. She is now a part of their collection.
Jessica’s Review:
It seems like Hunt was trying to go for shock value with a lot of the content that is in this novel. This also serves as trigger warnings, which **ARE SPOILERS**: We have sexual assault, extreme graphic torture, and cannibalism. Later on in the novel there is a dog, when it gets to a certain part my thinking to the author was: “You better not kill Brutus!” The dog does live.
**END OF TRIGGER WARNINGS/SPOILERS**
In addition to the ‘shock value’ with what Olivia and the other girls went through the writing was extremely juvenile. I did give Doll House 3.5 stars, so it wasn’t too bad… but it needs a lot of improvement before I would even think about possibly reading/listening to the second in the series.
Doll House did get a little better as the story went along after the first few chapters. I did not like the narrator Gregory Walston at first: At the beginning when he presented Olivia’s voice it just seemed like he just raised his voice by a couple of octaves. His voice also came off ‘strange’ as first, but then I realized that the novel takes place in Canada and he was attempting a Canadian accent. As the novel progressed I either got used to the narrator or the narrator changed the way he narrated.
Overall, there was much to be desired with this book. At least my guess as to who The Jackal (the villain) is was wrong! If I had been correct, I don’t know what my rating or review would have been because my thought was disturbing. But what really wasn’t disturbing with this novel?
I would give Hunt one more attempt with his novel Off the Grid as it sounds a bit interesting, but I won’t be in a hurry to use an Audible credit for it. I won’t be expecting much with it after listening to Doll House.