Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Girl in the Box series (Alone, Untouched, Soulless) is easy though disturbing read. The main character, Sienna, is a teenage girl who has been kept secluded by her mom from the outside world. Secluded is a nice way of saying held hostage and tortured. One day, mom goes out and doesn’t come back. Things only go downhill from there. Throughout the series, Sienna learns she has special powers (naturally) and goes on to fight for maybe justice (or at least her life). “My entire life is boxes.” I twirled the fork before setting it down on my discarded plate. “First I was trapped in my house or in the box; now I’m trapped on your campus. Most people are trapped in their towns, or their jobs, or their way of life. We go through life in our little boxes until we find ourselves in the last one, buried in the ground.” Overall, the story was engrossing but there were too many elements that were outright repugnant. Wolfe, the villain in the first book, was nothing short of a serial killing psychopath. Sienna’s upbringing could only be described as sadistic. For a YA book, the sexual innuendos were inappropriate. While I appreciate the authors desire to paint a world in shades of grey, I still need someone to root for. I struggled rooting for an immature girl who vacillated between irritating and offensive. On the plus side, these three were free (and still are on Amazon). It appears this author has a strategy to give away the first books in each of his series and then charge a bit higher for the next ones. Unfortunately for him, that strategy will backfire in my case. I won’t be reading any more of this series.