This wasn't creepy, just boring unless unsurprising plot twists shoehorned in please you. Began to suspect halfway through he was somehow getting paid by the word/short chapter. Would've given 0 stars if it was possible. ( )

It had moments of real, "Winter's Bone"-type squirmy-ness, overlaid with a pervasive sad, bleak emptiness. The book, and its real or imagined protagonist, broke my heart in a bad way. ( )

This book was ... difficult. It's well-written, with great voice, but it's just ... fucked up. That's really the only way to say it.

Art can be rough. Art can be scary. Art can be dark. It doesn't make the art bad, but it certainly doesn't make for a pleasant experience.

If I'm quite honest, I'm not sure what I got out of reading the book other than sort of the same type (not exactly the same, vis a vis scale and reality) of feeling as your 9/11 attack, or your Paris attacks (Charlie Hebdo or the nightclub campaign) — this is a thing that is possible. These are events and feelings that exist in the world, and from now on whenever I try to take a thought or an idea and skin it around my particular conceptual framework of How Things Are, it will forever have this sharp corner jutting out. The book's not reality (it's fiction), but the things that happened in it are not conceptually or practically impossible. They're barely even improbable, in some respects.

If you plan on making your way through this novel, make sure you have a nice chaser book prepared for after. ( )

Caring is Creepy by David Zimmerman is both dark and more than a little creepy. It’s the end of summer and fifteen year old Lynn Marie and her friend Dani have too much time on their hands and so they play their “internet game” of trolling strangers on various websites, pretending to be older and more sexually aware than they are. Lynn Marie actually engages with a young soldier and they form a relationship that soon finds him coming to her after he goes AWOL. She takes him in and hides him in a storage cupboard, but she also becomes so desperate to keep him with her that she virtually holds him prisoner. Meanwhile her mother, an ER nurse, is in the process of shedding her most recent boyfriend who has made the stupid mistake of stealing from a gang of drug dealers. These two story lines eventually merge to create one explosive finale.

Although this book with it’s high content of violence is not for everyone, for those of us who like to walk on the dark side it definitely delivers. The author sets a menacing atmosphere that simmers along making the reader very aware that trouble is looming on the horizon. Perhaps what is the most disturbing is the fact that this book is based on a real life situation. I thought that Caring is Creepy showed a lot of promise and I look forward to reading more from this author. ( )

Though the subject matter didn't exactly play to my personal interests, the book's pacing was so strong--in true Zimmerman fashion--that I couldn't put it down. It's easy to see why this book won the Alex Award! ( )