Book Review: True Crime by Samantha Kolesnik

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This is, by far, one of the most difficult books I have ever read, difficult emotionally, mentally, and even physically. Why? The elements surrounding this story like character development, conflict, setting, and theme, are delivered with a pacing of pure, dirty truth.

Kolesnik unfolds a terrifying reality from the unique perspective of the main character who, starting off as a young victim of cruel abuse, moves on to become a victimizer. Kolesnik doesn’t just tug at the reader’s emotions, she yanks on them, forcing the reader to become very aware of the real abuse that takes place all around us that the world often ignores. The reader is emotionally connected to the main character who is being demoralized by the people around her and by the one person who is supposed to protect her the most, her own mother. 

Can you blame the reader for siding with the main character all throughout the book, even after she decides to harm others because that’s what she knows best? 

It’s such an interesting point of view, one that keeps the reader wondering afterward, what would I do? How would I endure and survive such abuse? Kolesnik faces one of the scariest truths of our world and she faces it head on with her writing. She holds the reader's attention and makes us imagine, watch, and attempt to feel every detail. 

In terms of writing elements (setting, plot, character development), the story is written in first person, almost like the main character’s journal. This made the story more intimate for me. I wanted to set the book down at times because it was such an emotional and mental rollercoaster which, in my eyes, is a writer’s greatest success. 

The setting and plot are not necessarily developed to a point of exhaustion and in this story, they didn’t need to be. Being in first person POV made it possible for this book to unfold in diary form and made every aspect of it, especially the ending, eerie and disturbing.

If you’re up for the challenge, if you have ever experienced abuse or know someone who has, and if you want a very different perspective on it, then I challenge you to read True Crime. 

I am proud to welcome yet another talented and raw female author into the horror community. 

Here are some of my favorite quotes from True Crime:

“When she was calm, she liked to play games only she enjoyed.”

“Maybe when God created me, he disliked his creation and turned off the part connecting me to him, like an artist who didn’t want to sign a bad painting.”

“Her stillness became the twinkle in my eye.”

“Only crime was true.”

“One man alone in the world, born to a mother with a wolf’s heart hiding in a sheep’s skin.”

“I wondered if my presence were worse than death.”

“I wondered how the world made its villains and why it never apologized for making them.”

“What did it say about me that my one true guardian angel was the earth’s devil?”

Check out True Crime here. 

Follow Samantha Kolesnik on Twitter and Instagram. 

Listen to Samantha Kolesnik on the Ink Heist podcast here.

Thanks for tuning in, 
Sterp