Suburbia. Shady, tree-lined streets, well-tended lawns and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths. A boy with a very adult decision to make.

I don’t even know where to begin this review. 

The Girl Next Door is so fucking brutal… just so unrelentingly cruel & dark. Honestly, turning the pages of this book began to feel like prying the lid off a bucket full of wasps or something. 

Jack Ketchum based his story off the horrifying torture & murder of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens at the hands of her caretaker, Gertrude Baniszewski (along with her children, and children from the neighborhood) in 1965. The details of that case are just abhorrent, and extremely hard to process. 

This book begins innocently enough…our main character, David, is down at a brook catching crawfish. Like something out of a pre-pubescent dream, Megan Loughlin appears at the edge of the woods. David is instantly smitten. They catch crawfish together. He gives her some chewing gum. It’s awkward, and sweet, and it could be the beginning of any number of coming-of-age stories. 

Then we meet Ruth, and The Girl Next Door swiftly turns into a coming-of-age story set in hell. Ruth is Meg’s aunt. And as it turns out, Meg & her sister Susan are staying with Ruth for the summer, after a family tragedy. Ruth also happens to be David’s next-door neighbor, and her house is the default hang-out spot for David and his friends. It’s clear from the get-go that Ruth is…not a typical 1958 (when the book is set) parent. She lets her three boys (and the kids from the neighborhood) drink beer. She’s provocative. She’s bitter about her ex-husband. And the kids all love her. But as the summer progresses, Ruth begins to seem less & less stable, as evidenced by her exceedingly harsh treatment of both Meg & Susan.

It’s at this point that things just spiral out of control, and every page of this book begins to crawl with evil. Meg is locked in the basement, sometimes strung up, beaten, tortured. By Ruth. By her sons. By some of the kids in the neighborhood. It’s sickening.

It’s a first-person narrative, so we see things unfolding through David’s eyes. Which…is complicated. Oof. 

This book is just so fucking disturbing. It’s remarkably well written, and incredibly effective. But it is just a fucking grueling nightmare to read. I’m not necessarily qualified to give content warnings, but this book features all manner of violent abuse against a child: verbal, physical, sexual, and even self-harm.