“This one didn’t connect as hard for me as it has for a lot of others. Three reasons:
One, the writing style didn’t work for me. Just a matter of personal taste. Lots of -ing verbs, and lots of thinking, wondering, considering, and fewer actions. This is really micro, bitchy, picky stuff, just my personal thing.
Two, I don’t think the story creeped me out the way it did others. I think this specific setup is probably very creepy for lots of folks, just didn’t get under my skin. I can see how some people would feel differently and some would have a stronger connection to the idea of Laura feeling like sheâs somehow at fault for any of this. I beat up on myself plenty, just not so much in that specific way.
Three, I think the book backed off in some places when I wanted it to go there. The tooth scene and the near-end were two sequences that couldâve been more graphic and more to my taste. Which makes me sound like a monster, but sometimes I feel like when Iâm reading a book that centers actions around a pedophile, it can afford to go there on some of the graphic moments (not the pedophile moments, but some others) because the general premise is more distasteful than a description of some of the stuff that happens in the book. I would rather watch a movie with heads exploding all over the place than a 20/20 about a pedophile, you know? I find the former less distateful. Which isnât to say I found Dear Laura distasteful, just maybe that it edged up to something in a couple spots but didnât get its hands dirty. But again, I seem to be a minority in this feeling, so if that sort of thing is to your taste, youâll probably like this book. If you love true crime, youâll probably be more in this ballpark.
I donât think this is a bad book, itâs just not a book that was going to please me. Itâs just not my cup of tea, which in this case is offered to me by a man in a van as incentive to get in. I assume this is how pedophiles operate in the UK. “