Earn Your Happy Ending: Barbara's physical rescue comes easily enough, but it takes the rest of the book to emotionally overcome what happened to her.

A series of small victories inflicted on this woman who represents, in their minds, the entire unfeeling, egotistical adult world. Comparisons have been made to Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door which I haven’t read yet, as both books are apparently loosely based on the 1965 murder of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens. It also shows exactly how little adults think of this or any other individual aspects of a child's mind. Barbara’s sanity was pushed to – and beyond – its limit as the book reached its conclusion, and I did feel her mental state rapidly diminishing as she became aware of the ultimate plan for her. What is deeply disturbing and unsettling, however, is observing the children’s behavior and interactions with their captive.Maybe police forensic departments were pretty substandard in the 70s, but surely the police would work out that their stories don’t match, they’re obviously hiding something because they’re kids and don’t seem the least bit traumatised by what happened – no kid is that good at acting! but I have read much worse as I'm an addictive true crime/horror reader and this just seamed a little "calm" for me, I was told by a friend to read this before reading "THE GIRL NEXT DOOR" as she said if you can't handle reading"LET'S GO PLAY AT THE ADAMS" then you most definitely won't be able to handle reading this book!

But no, Johnson's writing seems to skirt around this just enough so that the kids simply come across as evil.As Paul became more comfortable with the situation and more confident, his character becomes outwardly sociopathic. A lot of people’s reviews mentioned how the characters in this weren’t believable, but I think otherwise. Sheryl Friedlander, writing for The Tampa Tribune, compared the novel favorably to The Collector and Lord of the Flies, praising its "style and flow of thought" as "smooth and interesting. I expected low-quality pulp fiction writing, but was surprised what a smart, taut thriller this was.