Women Scorned

Women Scorned

By:  Angela Alsaleem

ISBN: 9781936564385

Expected Publication:  April 13, 2012 by JournalStone

Available Format: Hardcover, Paperback, ebook

My Rating: ★★★★★

The publisher includes this disclaimer in its synopsis: This book is intended for adults and contains extreme violence, torture and graphic murder scenes. You have been forewarned.  For some, this just serves to pique curiosity even further, but if any of those things bother you, do NOT take this warning lightly because it is very, very true!

Camilla has been brutally murdered and left on the side of the road when a mysterious, shadowy figure emerges and touches her bloody, lifeless body. Suddenly, Camilla is ‘alive’ again with a taste for revenge, not just for herself, but for all those women who have been mistreated, abused, murdered in much the same ways. Camilla is both tortured and propelled by her nightmarish visions as she seeks out her victims one at a time.  The spirit that possesses her is also being sought out—by a dark cult bent on intertwining the living world with the evils of the spirit world.  Thrust in the middle of it all is Libitina, a struggling pathology student with a bit of a disconcerting side of her own.  She may be the only thing standing in the way of the cult and the demon horde waiting just on the other side of the doorway to our world.

Women Scorned is probably not something I would have picked up had I not proofread it for JournalStone.  But, I have to say, despite it being terribly disturbing, it is a fantastic horror novel.  The horrors of this story aren’t necessarily the things that go bump in the night. I’m talking about a walking dead, badass woman seeking big time revenge kind of scary…  Creepy, woman-child with a taste for torture kind of scary.

There are some truly twisted characters involved in this book, from the possessed murder victim, Camilla, to the green-eyed witch bent on instructing others of the ‘pleasures of pain’, to the evil behind it all. So many instances in the story I was completely grossed out, gasping, literally covering my mouth with my hand—but at the same time, I was drawn right in, sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to find out what happens next, how it all ties together, and if the characters will get what is coming to them in the end.  And that is not a guarantee…

What is guaranteed is that you are going to find yourself cringing, but you will connect with so many of the characters, maybe even when you think you shouldn’t.  There is a real story beneath it all, and all the disjointedness in the beginning, switching between seemingly unrelated points of view, will come together in a big way. Once you get sucked in, you’ll find you just can’t put it down.