The Boy Called It - Book Review

The Boy Called It

By - Dave Pelzer

Book Review

Honestly, I didn't look into this book before I began reading it. I read the back of the book, took a big gulp, thought to myself how bad can it really be? ... and began reading. I wasn't even two chapters in when it brought tears to my eyes. This poor child! How could anybody, let alone someone's mother, do this to a child? And it got worse from there! 

The book itself is written well and reads well but emotionally this book is a stinker! It'll make you cry and get angry by turns over and over again in every single chapter. And just when you think there can't possibly be anything worse that happens to this child you find out that you were wrong! The horrors just keep getting heaped upon him and it makes it worse for you to realize that this is a true story. This happened to this little boy. His mother was truly a monster. And it makes you weep.

I couldn't get through the book in one sitting, though some morbid part of my brain kept pushing me to read more. I set it aside right before I went to bed and I had nightmares all night long. I was an outsider trying to help this poor boy and nothing that I did was enough to help and I had to watch as the woman who should have been protecting and loving him tortured him. I had the same nightmare over and over again and each time it ended the same way.

I did finish this book in two nights. Not because I wanted more nightmares but because I needed to get through it ... there's more books after this one and I'd never get to the good parts of this poor boy's life if I couldn't get through the worst parts. The last two chapters I read in a frenzy to finish. To get beyond what had happened to this poor child. To grasp just how truly evil some people are and that they do indeed live in this world with us.

You never truly know what goes on in other people's houses. This book is a sad reminder of that fact. And I'd like to applaud the brave people who risked their jobs to save this boy from the torture that he went through in his young life.