I love the books of Bentley Little. I’ve read quite a few in the past but as all things go, you’re bound to have some bad apples in a barrel. I’ve read a few last year:

• Bentley Little – The Academy
• Bentley Little – The Store (not Walmart)
• Bentley Little – The Return Horror book
• Bentley Little – The Resort – Horror book review
• Bentley Little – His Father’s Son

And a few more the year before.

• Bentley Little – The Collection (2011)
• Bentley Little – The Association Book Review
• The Mailman – Bentley Little Book Review
• The Ignored * Bentley Little
• Bentley Little * Guests

This one was like.. meh. Loads and loads of penis references and raping. I’m thinking he went for shock value rather than quality horror.

it was an undercurrent of savageness he sensed there, an almost subliminal recognition that the potential for violence and atrocity lay just beneath his old man’s outwardly placid surface.

I suppose this is what this book is all about – violence. In Beverly Hills, a wealthy CEO goes on a bloody rampage and videotapes the slaughter. He leaves behind a chilling cryptic message…“ This is where it begins. ”
 
Miles away, an alarmed mother receives an unsettling letter from her estranged husband, stained with bloody fingerprints.
 
And all across California, children are becoming affected by a monstrous change—and their parents, by a mounting fear.
 
Social worker Carrie Daniels and reporter Brian Howells are determined to find the link between these baffling crimes. But they shouldn’t look too deeply into the lives of the victims. It’s quite dark there. And God help them, they won’t like what they find.

Eh, there’s a story somewhere in the book but it’s definitely buried beneath some other trash.

Her second night there, though, he’d had a freaky dream, and in the dream he’d craved blood. He did not seem to be a vampire, not exactly, but he desired the taste of blood, and when Diana announced that her period had come, he’d ripped off her pants and panties, thrown her down on the bed and shoved his face in her crotch, lapping up the warm red liquid that was leaking from the soft opening between her legs.

He’d awakened with an erection and a mouth so dry that it made him cough.
In reality, Diana’s period had come, and though he knew it was crazy, he’d carefully sneaked out of bed, crept to the bathroom and looked in the wastebasket, where he found a menstrual pad wrapped in toilet paper. Kirk withdrew the object, unrolled the toilet paper and gently touched his tongue to the red spot in the center of the pad. Gagging, nearly throwing up, he spit into the toilet and quickly downed a swig of Listerine to purge the sickening taste from his mouth. Disgusted with himself, he’d thrown everything back into the wastebasket, feeling ashamed and horrified and sickened.
Yet . . .
Yet he’d still retained something of the craving. The reality of blood had grossed him out, but the idea of it still held an allure.

 I feel that Bentley just threw together as many ridiculous ideas as he could muster to make one of the most ridiculous stories ever published. It seriously did not make much sense to me. I did not even see a point to story. I could not decide if it was a story about people with abnormalities, or aliens, or maybe it was a story about a serial killers? I am utterly dumbfounded. The plot, I am not even sure what exactly it was. And let’s not forget the penises.

On top of the pile was one of the monsters, male, its oversized penis partially severed and hanging down. Another lay on the right side of the mass of bodies, its ridged shiny skin in marked contrast to the dullness of surrounding work shirts.

‘‘I . . . am . . . here . . . for . . . her.’’ He spoke slowly, and his speech was thick and awkward, as though he hadn’t spoken English in a long, long time. At the word ‘‘her,’’ he absently reached down to touch his penis, and Andrew saw that while it was hard, it was also bruised and scraped, red and bloodied.

Marshall’s gaze went from its face to its breasts to its oversized sex.
‘‘Let’s fuck it,’’ Sutter said, and there was a gleam in his eye that Marshall didn’t like.
‘‘No,’’ he said, grimacing, but he wasn’t nearly as offended as he let on, and a voice inside was saying, Yes, yes.
Matthew was already pulling down his pants and pushing past them, his penis erect and ready. ‘‘Hell, they’s taken our women. We might’s well take theirs.’’

He could see it in the way they stared at the monster and then tried to look away, pressing down on the growing bulges in their pants. He glanced over at Carrie and saw that she had her eyes on one of the males, watching as it stroked its enormous slimy penis and grinned at her.