Word Scars

Rating: 4/5

Review: Disturbing is the first word that comes to mind. Dark is another. Add intriguing to the list, and you find that you just can't turn away. Two girls have been murdered within a year, their teeth removed, leaving a small Missouri town reeling. Who could have done such a thing? Camille, a newspaper reporter, and once a resident of Wind Gap where the murders have taken place, is sent back there to get the story. She receives a luke warm welcome from her mother and step-father. Surprise and interest from others. Soon, the friction begins, and the creepiness that surrounds Camille's life starts to be revealed. She started cutting herself when she was thirteen, just after her younger sister died. I don't mean slicing her skin. I mean carving words into her body. All over her body in fact. The last word she carved, before going to the hospital to recover, was vanish. There are descriptions in the book that completely freaked me out, but it had to do with animal processing for food, rather than the murders Camille was sent to write about. I seriously wonder if the author is a vegetarian. The rest of the story unfolds in twists and turns, keeping the reader guessing as to who the actual killer is. Camille gets involved with a detective on loan from Kansas City who's working on the case. There's no romance there, however, and pretty much everything in Camille's life is raw and gritty. Still, the book is well written, compelling the reader to keep going, til the shocking end.

Book Description:

WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart. Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.

NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg. Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.

HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle. As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.