Review: Only Women in Hell by A.R. Braun

I received this book to give an honest review.

Title: Only Women in Hell
Published Jan. 30, 2015
Genres: adult
Pages: 322
Format: eBook
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All eleven-year-old Stacey wants is to find a foster family. Then Dick becomes her loving foster father, and he's loving, all right. Too loving. Try overly strict. He comes to her bedroom to punish her for disobedience to, well, tyranny. But the punishment doesn't fit the crime, just his need for sadism. And his wife has his back.
When Stacey turns eighteen, Dick can't torture her anymore. She plans to skip college and move in with her boyfriend. Or so she thinks. One dab of chloroform and Stacey's a prisoner all over again. Now she's in a tiny room with no windows and a steel door locked from the outside. And Dick has the only key. He stops by every three days to drop off groceries and torture her and the daughters he fathered.
Stacey fights like a dog to escape. She has to, for she and her children's sake. Someday she will, and when she does, Dick will pay.

Rating:

 So I first want to put this out there before I start my review there is rape within this story so I am putting a trigger warning on this review as a heads up. Also this may contain SPOILERS!!!

Now it has taken me a few days since I finished this book to figure out how I am going to write this review and rate it. I think the author did a great job with details within the story even though they made your heartbreak for the mc. So we start off the story with Stacey who is eleven and is getting adopted for the first time. You would think that it would be all good but we soon learn that the place she will be living out is just like hell, her adopted parents are abusers both mentally and physically. Though we only get one encounter with the physical abuse we learn that it does continue. Her adopted mother Maria is very hard on Stacey and is always screaming and hollering at her especially when Stacey doesn’t call her mom. Dick is the one that beats Stacey where the bruises won’t show and you can just feel through the descriptions how sadistic Dick is.

Stacey tries to have a good normal life minus the hell she lives in at home. When we see her get a boyfriend you know it seems that things may go good for her eventually. Is Kevin the one to save her from Dick and Maria?

As we move on via five years and seven years we see how it gets worse for Stacey and we learn how truly sick and twisted both Dick and Maria are, it seems that Dick has plans for Stacey and it is something that just breaks your heart for her. This where the trigger warning of rape comes in. Though all the bad we see the good at the end of the tunnel so this does end in a good way but getting there is a tough thing for Stacey to do. She plans on escaping the clutches of Dick but what happens when she does? Can she and her children ever live in a normal society will Dick always have a hold on her or will he even let her leave?

Now for the rating I would love to give this book a five but I am leaning between a three and four just because of some of the issues I had within the book. 

• The writing at times it didn’t feel right I don’t want to use the world childish but it didn’t feel adult enough in some parts. You just have to read the book to probably understand what I mean for me it is hard to explain. 
• The way Stacey’s friend Jenna talks drove me batty I mean I understand at the age of eleven you use different slang words or what not but Jenna just didn’t sound right at times.
• Kevin now he is her boyfriend but there were some issues I had with him and his scenes. Stacey and Kevin go on a few dates and then he asks her to be his girlfriend which she is thrilled and then she is all like “I love you, lets get married and yada, yada, yada.” umm okay that is a bit quick (kind of reminds me of my mother and sister finding someone to love). Along with this later on Stacey hasn’t seen Kevin in years mind you and when she does she tells her kids to call him daddy and all that. Say what? What happens if he didn’t want to be with you. 
• I had a few more things that bothered me but I don’t want to give too much more away. 

 I guess I am going to have to go with a three at the end of all this just because the story has potential but just some things didn’t go good for me. This author seems to write in the genre of horror and since that is one of my favorite genres I will be looking into more of his work.

A. R. Braun is the author of the novel, Only Women in Hell, as well as the short-story collections Insanity and Horrorbook. He became interested in horror when he read “The Telltale Heart” as an assignment in high school. By the time he was eighteen, he had the whole Stephen King collection and started writing short stories for friends and family. His main goal was to put together a heavy metal band, and he spent many years working blue collar jobs and seeking out musicians, but never fell in with the right kind of guys.



A. R. has numerous publication credits, including “NREM Sleep” in the D.O.A. anthology; “Freaks” in Downstate Story magazine; “The Unwanted Visitors” in the Vermin anthology; “Coven” in the Heavy Metal Horror anthology; “Remember Me?” in Horror Bound magazine; and “Shades of Gray (the Symbiosis of Light and Dark)” in Micro Horror magazine. “The Interloper” won story of the month in 2009’s June Full Moon in Bloom issue of SNM Horror Magazine, and the piece was included in the SNM Horror anthology, Bonded by Blood 2: a Romance in Red. Weightlifting, mixed martial arts, an anonymous death metal studio project and audio comedy are a few of his current interests.