Annabelle
Annabelle
By Ruby Jean Jensen
The Sexton’s musings (spoilers ahead):
The dolls here are creepier than the old decrepit ones in MaMa. The sheer size of these suckers makes me cringe. The visual produced in your mind when they are chasing poor Mrs. Archer, who quite frankly got a raw deal all around, is terrifying! (Side note: I mean come on old man, just because your bit of worthless fluff (his rebound after his wife passed) left you and consequently her own child does not mean you can take it out on everyone else. And the fact that just a short time before he asked Mrs. Archer to come on her day off so that he could go party in the city REALLY pisses me off. Old school or not this dude is an ass! Oh and no way that bitch would have taken the car I bought…you just got such a good job, buy your own damn car! Weak as water!) But I digress, the loss of Mrs. Archer really bothers me for some reason considering I’m not a particularly sentimental ghoul and the way it happens makes it even worse. If she had been a bad person I would have been all about it but it seems she’s the best out of them all. She actually gave a damn about the kids in the household she had been serving for decades. And this was just a third of the way through. I found the story to be very frustrating. I understand that Jessica’s mother was a distant bitch, that really didn’t want to have a child. Honestly when she left I was glad of it. The child was better off without her selfish ass! And when she died, a sense of relief washed over me. She was an irresponsible, selfish piece of crap that had no right to rip this child away from everything she knew so that she could feel less lonely. Sorry sweetie, no one gives a damn about your guilt… Jessica is five, it’s a bit late for bonding now. Some people are just not cut out to be parents and this bitch was one of those people. A child does not need a mother like her! She was a mild version of the “mother” from the “castle”. If it suited her needs I’m sure that she would kill Jessica or at the very least neglect her.
Robert’s death left a bad taste in my mouth. That was not necessary. The dolls had the wrong end of the stick as it were. While their intensions were good there lack of understanding of the true situation made the whole thing tragic. Jessica also had a lack of understanding, I know she was five but come on! And the adults were stupid to think that she was not capable of understanding things. Kids are aware of more things than adults give them credit for. She knew that her mother didn’t want her. And unfortunately the arms that she found solace in ended up killing part of her family and in the end herself. Or at least that’s how I interpreted the epilogue. Honestly that’s complete BS! What happened to those children at the hands of their own mother was horrific but once she took care of her mother she should have moved on not taken over the body of a five year old girl. So really for me that makes her the most evil of the characters in this one. Two wrongs don’t make a right and two rights make a left so there’s that! There were some creepy scenes. The dolls were creepy when they were not moving let alone when they were. These scenes were few and far between however. Most of the book was Jessica and her incessant, annoying drive to go to her “real mother” and the adults around her being completely dense about the truth of the situation they found themselves in. For me the disbelief, the hanging on to “I’m just seeing things” attitude makes a story less enjoyable. Overall I’d have to say that MaMa kept my attention more than this one. Not that this is a bad read, it’s just moves at a much slower pace and is more dry in its style.
