I don’t  know why I ever chose to torture myself and willingly read A CHILD CALLED IT,  but Dave Pelzer broke something inside me – I haven’t been right since.  Knowing that, you’d think I’d have learned a lesson, (yeah, I know… I’m audibly laughing right now, too).  Nope. Years after ‘ACCI’ I decided that I wanted to read THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, and I let Jack Ketchum walk right in and start poking at the wound that David Pelzer left with a big, pointy stick.  I think it was the masochist in me who invited Mendal W. Johnson to drop by and sucker-punch my PTSD in the back of the head.  As far as the ‘Let’s Go Play At The Adams‘ fiction/non-fiction debate’ goes – I’m sticking with IT’S FICTION, but I’m sure all the atrocities have been committed, many times, and on many different Barbaras. 
Like LGPATA, THE ABUSE OF ASHLEY COLLINS is not a true story – but it very well could be. Watching the decreasing sanity, and the elevating brutality of Ashley’s parents demonstrates just how fast situations can escalate. One little poke at the wrong moment, and all control is lost – you can’t come back from certain things.

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. It is disturbing, and hard to read at times, but the author is not exploiting issues to gain shock value for a horror story. Jon Athan comes at the story from every possible angle, from every p.o.v., and sheds light on problems that most families would keep hidden in the dark. Let me misquote one of my favorite movies before you start reading…

WARNING: This book contains scenes of graphic violence, including violence towards children. This book is about abuse—verbal, physical, and emotional. This book does not feature any explicit sex scenes, but it does discuss sexual abuse. This book is not intended for those easily offended or appalled.

Ashley Collins, a sixteen-year-old girl, has severe behavior issues. She regularly fights with her parents, Logan and Jane. When the fights become personal and physical, Logan and Jane decide to take matters into their own hands. They chain their daughter in the basement and abuse her in an attempt to rescue her from her bad behavior… while delving into their own deviance and depravity.

This is a story of family and abuse. This is a story of violence and discipline. This is the abuse of Ashley Collins.

Jon Athan, author of A Family of Violence, brings you an uncompromising vision of human horror. Can the cycle of abuse be broken?

Find The Abuse of Ashley Collins on Goodreads, Amazon, and it’s available through the KU program.

Connect with the author via Twitter – @Jonny_Athan, Facebook,  through the officialJon Athan Website, or his author pages on Goodreads, BookLikes, LibraryThing  &Amazon. You can email him directly at: info@jon-athan.com, or head on over to the West Coast and start stalking him the old fashioned way!

I'm going to take a shot at explaining this book and why I read it, so please be patient with me this one is not easy. There is no sunshine and light...no this one is filled with heartache and grief and the occasional glimmer of what is frequently a happiness tainted by pain and grief from shadows of a past that won't let go.

Let me start by saying I don't shy away from stories that are dark or don't end well. I don't make a steady diet of them but to be honest some of my favorite books either have or end with a bit of a darker undertone to them. None of them prepared me for what was contained between the covers of 'A Little Life'. I'm not going to try and explain the actual story. I've discovered we often don't read the same book as others do. Oh, it may contain the same words and the same number of pages and even the same pretty picture on the cover but where it differs is how we interpret those words, how they make us feel, the story that we see in our minds eye. So I'll try and share with you the story that Hanya Yanagihara gave to me. For me 'A Little Life' was about friendship, love, forgiveness, the family we are given and the family we make, the ability of the human spirit to endure and to overcome the cruelest of experiences and ultimately the limits of what even the strongest of souls can endure.

Of all the books that I have read and there really are quite a few on that list, 'A Little Life' has definitely proven to be the most emotionally gut wrenching, heart breaking story I have encountered to date and I truly hope that doesn't change ever.

For me the sign of a truly good story is how I feel towards the characters that the author creates. Jude St. Francis found his way into my heart and I don't think he'll be leaving any time soon, I wanted to claim him for my own, to give him the family and the love every child is entitled too, I was thrilled by the friends he was surrounded with as an adult. By Willem who loved him without reservation, Harold & Julia, tried tirelessly to be the parents he should have had, his friend Malcolm, Andy who cared for him as a friend and a doctor even when he resisted and so many other characters I even found myself liking his friend JB, who at one point I was pretty sure I was just going to start thinking of as the douchebag artist.

As much as I loved this book I can honestly say it's not a story that I'll ever be re-reading so I'm glad that I took the time to enjoy it now and didn't rush through it (and I do mean didn't rush I've been working on this one for about 3 months now) and I honestly would not recommend it to just anyone but if you can handle the dark side of life from time to time in your reading and an HEA or even a HFN isn't required than I definitely suggest checking this book out.

This was an interesting book. The writing itself was not that good, but that did not detract from the experience of reading this. I think Drain needed to write this, for herself: to vent, to rationalize, and it was a form of therapy for her. I respect that narrative.

I will say one thing about the WBC, it does not deserve our attention, our outrage, because they feed off it. They almost get off on it, to be crude. They, in my armchair psychologist analyst, have a collective martyr complex. They are emotionally-stunted as a collective. This is a dying cult, it will be dismantled or die out in the next few decades. We should ignore them, that will be the ultimate form of suffering for them, and it will rob them of their collective identity if no one reacted to them at all.

I hope that Drain will seek out a therapist to deal with all the crap she had to put up from not only the church, but her father and mother.

Being part of the ONTD community, there was a time while reading this that I enjoyed the spilling of the truth tea. The shading of members and the pastor, and sometimes not so subtle dragging. It was like reading a WBC tell-all.

I think Drain, and the Phelps girls who have also left the church after Drain, have a long way to make up for the damage, hurt, and pain they caused. I feel sympathetic towards them, but many won't and I can understand why. I never had to deal with this cult first hand, so it's easier for me to forgive them. (For those that don't know, I am a lesbian).

I look forward to reading more memoirs from the ex-members of the WBC cult.

Also huge trigger warning for physical and emotional abuse.