Into the Abyss (The Beautiful-Ugly #2) by James Snyder ~ Book Review

Book Synopsis:

Her parents are dead. Her only sibling, her brother Eric, has been taken from her. And after her first experience with a foster family goes horribly wrong, nine-year-old Connelly Pierce doesn’t know who, if anyone, she can trust. Her caseworker, a ditzy ex-actress named Lillian, tries her best to help. But an ever-wiser Connelly sees that Lillian can barely take care of herself, let alone help her with her ever-worsening situation.

Then, a chance encounter with her brother at a San Francisco emergency room changes everything. Eric tells her that his own foster parents have divorced, kicking him back into “the system” just like her. When she later learns that Eric has disappeared, running away to New York City, now fourteen-year-old Connelly knows what she has to do. She’s going to run away as well. She’s going to New York to find Eric. And then, together, the both of them will have the family that the system could never provide. But what she doesn’t know, but begins to understand the deeper she descends into her darkening journey, is that quests of this magnitude, often come with consequences to match.

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About the Author:

James Snyder was born in Memphis, Tennessee and fell in love with the cadence and sound of storytelling as a child, listening to the meandering tales of his Southern grandmothers and great aunts. While still a child, his family moved to Napa Valley, California where he attended middle and high school, and began taking writing classes at the local college. He left after a year to join the military, and was a soldier with a tactical mobile operations unit in Germany. It was there, while pulling a Harz mountaintop guard duty one night during a snowstorm, he had the chance encounter with another soldier that ultimately became the genesis for his debut military thriller AMERICAN WARRIOR.

He is also the author of the suspense thriller DESOLATION RUN, the young-adult/new-adult BEAUTIFUL-UGLY TRILOGY, the short story collection TALES OF THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY, and other literary works.

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Review:

Sometimes I wonder why I read these kinds of stories but they just rope me in. The sad part about all of it is that this is stuff that really does happen to children in the system. I would like to think it doesn't happen at all or to one in a million but I think it may be more than we really want to believe.

This is book two in The Beautiful-Ugly Trilogy by James Snyder and it picks up where book one left off, following Connelly through her life moving from one orphanage or foster family to another or eventually out in the streets. This book Connelly finds a great family to live with or at least it looked like it was going to be a wonderful family until all the horrible things I don't even what to think about happens to her. The foster dad introduces Connelly to getting high with weed and then harder stuff. He also uses Connelly for pleasure while his wife is off doing someone else. Connelly is in a great school for the arts but everything goes quickly downhill for Connelly and she knows it is time to get out of there. This time she is older and doesn't wait for child protective services to come and take her away she takes off on her own and tries to find Eric her brother.

After everything that happens to Connelly I was really surprised to see her so trusting and naive. This book was an emotional read but also an eye opener to the abuse and life that some children in our world live through. This book started off a bit slow but picked up and flowed really well after all the way to the end. I look forward to reading book three and finding out how this trilogy will end. I was really sad to see how Eric had turned out and how the author wrote the brief scenes with the siblings. The again if they had found each other and it was happy ever after then we wouldn't have a book three.

I give this book a 4 out of 5 stars.