shelby's Reviews > Cruel Sacrifice

3
It’s pretty standard true crime sensationalist dollar bin fodder but I didn’t go in with the highest standards so it was ok. I wouldn’t even leave a review on this except for to say that I couldn’t help but feel that the author should have taken a more socio/anthropological approach to this book— what sort of town creates the environment where kids as young as 12 are having sex, mutilating themselves & doing hard drugs? Where entire families are casually sucked into Christian fundamentalist cults and regularly exorcise children as young as 6? Where a man can be extremely openly sexually deviant and abuse multiple children + his wife over the course of years & everyone knows and kind of ignores it? How did the queer community fostered in this conservative town provide a safe haven for these children, and how did its lack of adult supervision harm them? Like everyone was so deeply fucked up…

(view spoiler)[A niggling aside: the author also seemed almost bored when writing about the actual victim, Shanda Sharer, outside of the gory details of the crime, lol. Her backstory, the trials, and her family’s coping were pretty much rushed and hand waved, I feel like Sharer’s mother was even made to seem like a famewhore for talking to the press about her daughter. In contrast, every detail of Melinda Loveless’ extremely dysfunctional and abusive family life was excruciatingly & salacious delved into, for what I can only assume was our entertainment— sex, drugs, & violence sells & I’m not immune because I finished this mad fast (hide spoiler)]