The Playground

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I love Bradbury's writing, and recently read Dandelion Wine (see my review HERE), which is semi-autobiographical interludes of a summer of his childhood, in a town he calls Green Town. I was startled that this was also set there, as it's much darker, and with a stronger supernatural element. You will see some parallels with that movie when you read this one, but it is hard to imagine how far the author went with this one. If this was made into a movie, it would never see the light of day. It is SAW on steroids to the AAHHHHH degree.

Over the last number of years, Aron Beauregard has emerged as one of Extreme/Splatterpunk Horror’s true Heavy Weights. His books are hotly anticipated by his ever-growing throng of fans and he has been raking up the accolades as well – becoming Splatterpunk Award nominated and Splatterpunk Award winning during that time.Eve, living well on her trust fund and her husband Eric, a landscaper. They live in a large but messy house with their three children Eve believes that children shouldn't lead structured lives and should be free to play without parental interference.

What an interesting web you weave, Shemilt! The synopsis definitely says best when it comes to Big Little Lies feels because those are definitely all there! These parents are the worst. I mean, they don't mean to be but they're so busy dealing with their own issues to really pay attention to their children. Then again, what's really right or wrong - every one has a different parenting technique. I don't even want to blame them *too* much even though there are definitely some that I just wanna slap silly.

The children will surprise you as your going on this vile and twisted adventure right along with them. The choices they will have to make, the choices some of them do make, and the consequences of thier actions. The familiarity of their childhood is captured really well. The soft hearted, the hard hearted, the shy and meek, the conformed and the broken. I loved them all and was routing for them no matter their character, after all they are just kids. If you are at all familiar with Aron's writing, then you should be well prepared for the darkness that lies within his storytelling. But you should also be expecting superb character developement, well developed plots, and unique settings. Others who suffered in childhood use their experience to strive to make sure the next generation do not suffer in the same way. I will! Those little beasts, you should’ve seen them. Jim’s my son, he is; he’s not yours, remember." He felt the boy’s thin legs about his shoulders, the boy’s delicate fingers rumpling his hair. "I won’t have him butchered." I will say that it was interesting to watch how the mystery played out. I figured it out early, but one character made it especially intriguing! Too bad, more of this character wasn’t featured. Overall, I can't say I would recommend The Playground. It has some interesting moments, but the narrative style combined with vile characters makes this a miss for me.

Three low-income families have been given a handsome retainer to join Geraldine Borden for a day at her cliffside estate. All the parents must do to collect the rest of their money is allow their children to test out the revolutionary playground equipment Geraldine has been working on for decades. But there’s a reason the structures in the bowels of her gothic castle have taken so long to develop—they were never meant to see the light of day.Big Little Lies meets Lord of The Flies in this electrifyingly twisty follow-up to Jane Shemilt’s breakout debut The Daughter. It’s 1953 and Ray Bradbury wrote a story about parenting and playgrounds. The main character – Dad – is a widower. He may have had a hard time grieving or taking on the role of being a single parent. His sister has been living with him for six months now to help. That seems - but don’t know 100% sure - to have gone well until today. His son is three years old and she left him in the park play ground when she went shopping. The Dad freaks out on that. Why is the question of the day! Did he think his son was too young for this? (I did but the story isn’t about me!) Was he projecting his past? Is it his cascade of unhappy memories or fear or guilt from his childhood memories that haunts him and makes him take the actions he does? Or is it a quasi-observation on parenting and the bullies and rough kids that came out of the fog of his dream mind and took over? Or did his sister make a bad choice that scared him “almost to death”? La necesidad de Underhill de proteger a su hijo, Jim, de la horrible realidad de la vida es tan profunda que quizá uno tendría que ser padre, o madre, para entenderlo completamente, por lo que el amor de los padres es un elemento tan crucial en esta historia como la crueldad infantil. And in this story, the Playground is hell, the place where children go to be bullied and beaten, and it is this fate, that of living a childhood of torment, that Charlie wants to save his son from experiencing. If you're a parent or an older sibling, you probably know this feeling very well - the intense protectiveness and the fear of letting the child step out alone into the big and cruel world.

A few too many characters and none of the adults are very good parents. They are all so totally wrapped up in themselves and their issues (sometimes rightfully so, but still) that they don't have a clue what is going on with their kids. And the kids were a bit too smart for their own good, I find it implausible that all of them were able to lie so easily and hide what was actually going on. I think the ending worked really well and followed how the reader sees the events played out. Beauregard does a great job of showcasing the hurt that was created with Geraldine’s actions as well as how this directly impacted the various characters in the novel. I did, and it became one of my top 5 movies ever. The concept, while simple, was utterly brilliant and superbly executed. La forma en que Bradbury retrata a Underhill es muy profunda. No parece mentirse a sí mismo. No vive en negación, al menos en cuanto a sus motivos. Reconoce que sus sentimientos sobre el parque de juegos, y sobre su actitud sobreprotectora hacia Jim no son particularmente saludables, pero están motivados por dos cosas: Beauregard has set this up as an escape room story for kids – with the only difference being each room is literally live or die – and the dying part is always a carnage filled paragraph of viscera. It also shows how some of the kids will band together and work to survive, while others are singularly focused on themselves and that typically doesn’t work out so well.What I didn’t like: You’ll need to go into this fully allowing yourself to just believe. Sure the scope/scale of these indoor rooms is insane. And so are the elaborate punishment devices that have been booby-trapped within each one to decimate the participants, but that’s part of the joy of reading something to just read and have fun. If you struggle to suspend belief for any amount of time, you’ll most likely want to stay clear of this one. He weathered the first blast of sound, blinking. His nostrils took over when his eyes and ears retired in panic. First off--what is with the title? There is not one playground mentioned in this book, it has nothing to do with playgrounds. I'd call this a domestic thriller, set within a group of people who meet when they sign their children up for dyslexia tutoring (which is never really mentioned much except that it was a reason why they got together at first). The couples kind of become friends because their children become friends and everything goes from there. I saw where it was going from a mile away, but it was still a decent and readable thriller overall.