Katelyn Deason was young, naIve, and innocent at six years old.

That is, until she made the mistake of descending those cellar steps and viewing the first of many horrors down below.

You see, her father wasn’t who she thought he was. He wasn’t the loving and “normal” daddy that all the other kids had. He was very different.

She soon realizes how different as the years pass and unspeakable things begin to happen.

Will Katelyn be able to cling to her sanity after witnessing all of Daddy’s horrors?

I received a free copy of this book courtesy of the author in exchange for an honest review.

My Daddy the Serial Killer is a thriller centreing on a father with a murderous streak and his young daughter. For quite a while Katelyn has a reasonably normal life with her father, a journalist, and her cat. Or at least as normal a life with a dad with mood swings and a door to the basement permanently padlocked shut. Katelyn hears strange noises, whimpers and moans coming from the basement one day, and spots the door is unlocked. The temptation is too much but what she discovers will turn her world upside down.

The story follows Katelyn’s discovery at a relatively young age that her father is a serial killer, and how she copes with it as she continues to grow up. The sometimes violent mood swings and erratic behaviour along with multiple murders take their toll on the maturing girl traumatically affecting her. As adolescence takes hold, she desperately seeks ways to get away from her father. Underage drug use, drinking, prostitution and an unhealthy level of teenage partying ensue in an attempt to escape the trauma she has experienced.

As Katelyn spirals into a sense of defeat, she feels the only way out is to take her life. A number of unsuccessful attempts later leave her resigned to failure and an overwhelming idea that she cannot escape. That is until an unexpected pregnancy offer her new hope and a dose of luck and fortune see her out of the situation, and in to an adulthood of marriage and parenthood. But with a call bringing her back to her past to visit her father, terminally ill in hospital, Katelyn must work to keep everything she has worked had for from crumbling around her.

The story isn’t too bad overall, with an overarching sense of despair and defeat running throughout the book. Sadly though I felt the ending to be all too predictable. The sense of time felt a bit disjointed throughout the book, and the ending left too much unanswered for me.

My rating: