Wow, when you find out that there is information left out of this book b/c it's too digusting or horrifying to relate you know you've got a good piece of horror. I read this book in a day, & was completely mesmerized by Ketchum's storytelling. I thought the 1st person point of view was really interesting, you find yourself pulling for him & maybe not really wanting the believe that he acutally participated (passivley anyway).

I would recommend it for any horror lover, the fact that it's rooted in truth makes it even more terrifying!

Good story, very emotional, overall a good read, but I felt Ketchum held back at certain key points of this book where he could have really floored his audiences. Who knows, maybe there will be an uncensored edition.

I picked this book up on the fly yesterday at Barnes N Noble during my lunch break. Just thought "Hey, that looks interesting"...didn't even know about the movie. I got home at six, read through dinner, and finished this thing at eleven last night while a bad storm was ripping through the northeast. It's the most difficult, challenging, and brutal book I have ever read, the fact that it is inspired by real events making it all the worse.

I generally don't read stuff dealing with the issues you come across in "Girl Next Door", but I felt that I had to sit down and read this thing because stuff like this really happens. It's not just the one case this book is inspired by, but this stuff happens all over the world and more often than people care to imagine. That's what to think about when you get to the meaty, grotesque scenes in the story.

It's not just the plot, but Ketchum's prose is outstanding. You feel what David feels, experience what he experiences, and you keep turning and turning the pages to go deeper into the story.

Read this, it opens your eyes and moves your heart.

This is a great book. I am looking forward to seeing the movie and I truly hope it does the book justice. This is one of Jack Ketchum's best.

Sylvia Likens was not killed by her aunt and cousins as many reviewers have stated. Gertrude was just a neighborhood lady who took in Sylvia and her sister because their parents offered to pay her $20 a week while they traveled with a carnival. She was poor, had too many kids and barely supported them. Sylvia's father never bothered to check out Gertrude's home to make sure it was suitable for his children. In his own words he "didn't want to pry" into Gertrude's private life. Unbelievable. Just wanted to clear that up. Might be kind of insulting to the Likens' family to say their own blood was responsible for the death (although some would say the parents were partially to blame for not checking up on their daughters).

When I first read about the horrific torture murder of Sylvia Likens in 1965, I prayed that Gertrude Baniszewski and her noxious spawn would all die horrible deaths in jail and spend eternity in hell. Forty years later, the case still haunts me. How does anyone sink to such barbaric savagery against another human being, let alone drag their children into it?

The case evidently haunted Jack Ketchum enough to impel him to write this loosely-based novel on the Likens murder, and it is not a book for the faint of mind, heart or stomach. This is a gut-wrenching book that will blow you away. Like David, the story's narrator, we are dragged into it as much as we are horrified and repelled by it. This book is what great horror writing is all about.

The girl next door is Meg Loughlin, who, with her little sister Susan, comes to live with their aunt Ruth after their parents are killed in a car accident. Susan is severely injured and left crippled; only Meg survives unscathed. By the time we discover what's in store for her at Aunt Ruth's house, we realize it would have been better for her if she had died in the accident.

Aunt Ruth lives with her three sons in a New Jersey suburb and she's considered the coolest mother on the street. She lets the kids smoke and gives them beer. She's lukewarm to taking in Meg and Susan, but they are family and they have nowhere else to go after their parents have been killed. But Aunt Ruth isn't firing on all cylinders and her unfocused anger at the world for dealing her a bad hand -- abandoned by her husband and left to fend for herself -- soon finds a convenient target. Her sons, along with several other neighborhood children, have been playing a game for years, in which one child is outcast and is It. Now Aunt Ruth, with the enthusiastic participation of the kids, have made a new game. Meg is It, and this time they're playing for keeps.

David, a 12 year old from down the street narrating the story years later from the perspective of adulthood, tells how Ruth graduated from slaps and spankings to more grotesque punishments, and from there to straight-up torture. He watched in horrified fascination as Meg's nightmare escalated into unspeakable torment, wondering when or if it would ever stop or what would happen next. What happened next, David says in one stark, shattering sentence, was the basement.

It's what happened in the basement that shows Ruth and the children in all their savagery and depravity while they turned into something less than human. It's where Meg suffered the tortures of the damned. And meanwhile, what about David? He saw all this happening and never said a word until it was too late. Why?

Ketchum doesn't answer this question; he lets the readers come to their own conclusions. Without pontificating or moralizing, he lets Meg's ghastly story tell itself. Like some other reviewers, I felt the story's resolution was a bit too pat, but infinitely more satisfying than the real-life case that inspired it. The real "Aunt Ruth", Gertrude Baniszewski, walked free after spending twenty years in jail.

This is not a book you will want to read again any time soon. It may keep you awake for a few nights after you read it. But it is a fascinating study of evil that will stay with you for years. Because true evil doesn't have vampire fangs or a demon's horns and tail; sometimes it's as ordinary and banal as the lady and the kids next door.

Judy Lind

As I read this book, I kept telling myself that the happy ending would come soon, that someone would fianlly step in and say "enough is enough" and save this girl from her abusers. But, no, the abuse just got more disturbing and at one point I threw the book across the room becuase I couldn't take it anymore. Just like the main character David, I too felt compelled to return to the basement next door.
This is a sick story- hard to put down, hard to stomach, but well written nonetheless.

Jack Ketchum is known as one of the most extreme writers in horror. This may lead you to assume he's someone doing 'gore for the sake of gore' or just making unbelievably evil one dimensional situations purely to torment people. You'd be very wrong.

Ketchum is a literate, dare I say poetic writer. His horror often comes not from surreal situations but rather the hyper-real. Everyday life shattered with depravity and violence that comes believeably; and that makes it all the morre horrible.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is certainly a horror novel. It fills you with dread, repulsion, and fear. It also depresses you, because it is about the fragile grasp of morality that the pre-adolescent have, especially when they are being coerced by the mentally unstable. (if you think this story is not realistic look at cults, or even better, child soldiers and their warped reality in Africa).

Ketchum goes into aspects of life most writers fear to go. It is just too far out from the comfort zones, it leaves you feeling as if the world doesn't make any sense. The book is haunting and depressing. It is not enjoyable but it is a story that will get a reaction from anyone with a pulse. Think Lord of the Flies if Dahmer washed up on shore and began to lead the kids.

There are horror stories that aim to thrill and excite the desensitized, and then there are those that re-sensitize the calloused horror-file. GIRL NEXT DOOR is the latter. If too many Texas Chansaw Massacres have left you numb, pick this up and prepare for a wake-up slap to the face. And if you have no stomach for true evil human nature, then I fear for your sanity reading this book.

[...]

Stephen King said Jack Ketchum was one of the business, and that he is.

The Girl Next Door is a horrifying novel based on the true story of Sylvia Lykens, a girl that was brutally tortured and then killed by her aunt and cousins. The fact that The Girl Next Door was based off a true story inspired me to rent the movie, and it wasn't two days after I had watched the movie adaptation that I had read the book.

The book starts out with our narrator. Our narrator is the main character of the book. He's writing his story about what happened back at Ruth--the aunt's--house in the late 1950s, and it's a tale that pains him to write. Our character opens up with a thought of what true pain is, and how his first and second wife had never truly experienced it.

Then starts the story.

Our main character is David, a twelve-year-old boy who's crayfishing the day he meets a girl named Meg Loughlin. Meg's a girl, a real girl, not one out of the Playboy magazines that David and his friends look at. He's immediately attracted to Meg, but when he sees a scar, he questions it.

Meg's family had an accident... and only Meg and her sister, Susan, survived.

When David starts to see that Ruth is targeting Meg for some strange, unknown reason, he begins to get worried. Meg tells him that she hasn't eaten for three days one day while he and her are out walking together. This prompts David to buy her a sandwich, but Meg didn't know that sandwich would start the most brutal torture she has ever experienced.

The Girl Next Door is a truly frightening story. The novel is different from other books and movies that deal with torture. It isn't just an adult torturing someone in this film. No. The Girl Next Door shows us that children are just as capable of evil as any adult is, and that's what sets it apart. Speculation revolves around the book and why David chooses what he chooses to do, but I'm not going to go into that, as it would spoil the book.

The Girl Next Door is a thinking man's novel, and I promise you that it will make you question every single little thing you knew about the horrors that surround the world today. It only took this book to make me change my whole view on how the world can operate, and it only took this one book to make Ketchum one of my favorite authors.

I can not begin to express the feelings I got from reading this book. Like other reviewers, I can sit through books like American Psycho and not be as disturbed, but I was in shock while reading this book. Not only is the story true, but it is written out so well by Jack Ketchum. You can picture everything he is describing..unfortunately. Definately worth reading just for that fact that it is a true story and shows that even though we can describe monsters as scary non-human creatures, what people should be scared of are the real monsters, other humans.

I just finished this harrowing story, certainly one of the most intense books I've ever read. And that's saying a lot because I'm somebody who has no trouble reading books like JG Ballard's Crash and Bret Ellis's American Psycho.

It's not so much the gore (there's very little compared to standard horror fare), but the fact that it cuts so close to home. It's a domestic "Lord of the Flies" where the potential in us all to do harm is unleashed, gone berserk. It was the "perfect storm."

This is an important story of child abuse, a grim, grim reminder of just how helpless children are. You will be reminded of your own childhood, of the sheer dependence on your parents, how they held all the cards, for better or for worse.

As the narrator of the book put it so well: "...they could dump us in a river if they wanted to. We were just kids. We were property. We *belonged* to our parents, body and soul. It meant we were doomed in the face of any real danger from the adult world and that meant hopelessness, and humiliation and anger."

And I'll not soon forget Jenny's cry of "Mommeeee! I want my Mommeeee!" during the assault on her sister. Or Meg's final line of dialogue. Heart-breaking!

Yes, this abuse really happened -- based on the grisly torture death of one Sylvia Likens. But the fact is child abuse occurs every day, unseen and only seen when somebody happens to get caught. Like the parents of the infant who died because his skin was literally liquefied under scalding hot water (that happened last year in California) and the many, many other horrific cases. Let's face it -- some people simply shouldn't have children. Or at the very least there ought to be mandatory classes on parenting, the most important job one can ever have. Yet, no thought is given to it in our society.

Being abused as a child, made to feel like "property" leaves marks that don't go away. It shouldn't be a surprise that these kids often grow up to be deeply troubled adults, alienated or even violent. It's just a vicious cycle!

*SEMI-SPOILER WARNING*: The only place where I felt Ketchum strayed (and why I took away a star) was the way Ruth is dispatched at the end. It was way too "Hollywood" an ending, that kind of neat revenge. It would've been much more powerful to stay closer to what really happened. The real-life "Ruth" was Gertrude Baniszewski who served only 20 years of a life-sentence, was released early for "good behavior" and lived the rest of her life as a free woman without incident. There is NO justice! And all the kids who took part in the torture were given very light to no sentences and also lived long lives, even got married. A travesty! But that ending would've been so much better at showcasing just how unfair the world is, a much truer life lesson: bad people don't always get their comeuppance and good people sometimes just suffer and that's it.

Anyway, an important read. I wish it were mandatory reading in high schools and for those thinking about being parents.

PS -- I would avoid the 19.95 paperback edition and just get the latest mass market edition (which apparently comes with a bonus interview). I mistakenly purchased the expensive edition (over-priced!), thinking it'd be illustrated, since it lists an illustrator's name. But that is not the case. You get NO illustrations. I hope Amazon will fix the mistake.

Had it not been for the movie's release, I probably wouldn't have found out about this book, nor the author. But I wanted to check it out before I saw the movie and read some good reviews.

As many people have said it's a disturbing book. Not so much violent with raw gore and blood but just really gets to you, deep. Ketchum did a great job of taking the reader along on a ride that most people wouldn't go voluntarily. And I'll admit that I was tempted to put the book down almost halfway through the story. Not from the presence of violence, but because of the reactions of the protagonist. To me, that was the most disturbing aspect of it.

The writing style reminded me much of Stephen King's style in the 80's, especially `It' since it centered around children. It was a quick and easy read and I finished the book in 2 days.

Really nothing bad to say about this book. It was the first from Jack Ketchum that I've read and certainly won't be the last. Highly recommended.