Will You Consider "The Merciless" A Blessing or A Curse?

Brooklyn Stevens sits in a pool of her own blood, tied up and gagged. No one outside of these dank basement walls knows she’s here. No one can hear her scream.

Sofia Flores knows she shouldn’t have gotten involved. When she befriended Riley, Grace, and Alexis on her first day at school, she admired them, with their perfect hair and their good-girl ways. They said they wanted to save Brooklyn. They wanted to help her. Sofia didn’t realize they believed Brooklyn was possessed.

Now, Riley and the girls are performing an exorcism on Brooklyn—but their idea of an exorcism is closer to torture than salvation. All Sofia wants is to get out of this house. But there is no way out. Sofia can’t go against the other girls . . . unless she wants to be next. . . .

In this chilling debut, Danielle Vega delivers blood-curdling suspense and terror on every page. By the shockingly twisted end, readers will be faced with the most haunting question of all: Is there evil in all of us?  -Goodreads

 My Thoughts

Danielle Vegas' The Merciless is a perfect example of what happens when the book hype machine that we know and often love is allowed to run unchecked.
The best statement that can be made about this book in the way of a warning would be:  In spite of what you may or may not have heard, try to go into this book with an open mind and no expectations.

This story reads like a truncated mash up of Mean Girls and The Heathers with a good dose of southern fried 'misuse of religion for well meaning, but very unscrupulous ends.'

Main character Sophia Flores, is new to the town of Friendly MS.  Looking for new friends she finds herself with two options.  Riley, the bible toten' alcoholic. (But its OK because its Communion wine.). Or Brooklyn, who may or may not have sacrificed a cat on school grounds.

Anyway...

In the fastest case of insta-friending on the planet.  Sophia finds herself an inductee into the cult of Riley...and the games begin.

That is when readers discover that there is a long standing history between Riley and Brooklyn, the creep factor is dialed way up, and people find themselves party to attempted exorcisms gone wrong.

True to the girlie horror movie reference from previous paragraphs, there is lots of blood, gore, death, and general mayhem.  What is sorely lacking in this read however, is a three dimensionality that serves to make the characters of the story real to the reader.

At 200+ pages, The Merciless proves to be just the right size for a one sitting read.  This is a fun, dark, read that is just right for the colder, gloomier nights of October.