After her mother’s new boyfriend made a pass at her, sixteen-year-old Brenna ran away from home. On the streets, she thinks she has the opportunity of a lifetime when a talent scout slips her his card. She thinks she’s too young for this, but that’s exactly why he’s interested. Brenna’s dream is about to become a nightmare.

At the risk of spoilers, I will say that the horror of this book is that this is a real world scenario: it happens. For anyone in a similar situation in the real world, a sixteen year old cannot legally be held to a contract they sign. You can walk away.

The story is initially in third person close perspective showing us Brenna’s point of view. By showing her thoughts, it shows the reader her youth, her naivete, and by the third page, the mistakes that will definitely lead to something bad.

The horror starts early for older readers, when Brenna is approached on the street by a talent scout for a model agency and called to an interview. An adult knows that an agency waiving parental consent is bad, but for a sixteen year-old it is a dream. The minor pressure of saying they will go with another girl if she doesn’t sign now gets her signature, and she is too young to know that because she is sixteen it is worthless. By the end of her interview, she’s fallen hook line and sinker for it, and the reader already knows that something incredibly bad is underway.

And on Page 20, the book head hops to Sebastian, her recruiter with no warning at all – no scene break, no segue, no font change – for two paragraphs, and all that suspense is wasted. Anyone familiar with dubious agencies will know exactly what is going on.

From then on it starts head-hopping between Brenna and Sebastian’s point of view with no warning. When the trap closes, the tragedy of the story is that if Brenna was a little more street smart, a little more savvy, she’d know she could walk out right there. Once she’s out, and if she contacts the authorities, there’s not much they can legally do about it.

I won’t spoil it by revealing what happens from there. While there are no graphic descriptions of what happens, the aftermath is made clear.

I will say that, to me, the entire second half of the story from Chapter 4 onwards felt somewhat bolted on. For a good horror standalone, it could simply have ended on Chapter 3. The reason it does not is because this is a short prelude to another book, Dark Secrets and designed to set up back story and characters for that book. It also has an exerpt and two purchase links for the book at the end.

Moving to the presentation, the cover, aside from its red tinge, could grace a romance book. At the front of the book is the standard front matter, a table of contents, and a quote from Stephen King about love which seems to be unrelated to the story. The formatting is well done, with paragraphs properly inset. The only exception to that is the failure to mark scene breaks where the point of view changes. Spelling and grammar I cannot fault.

As a standalone read it is not as engaging as perhaps the longer book might be. For horror readers trying to get a feel for the author’s style or deciding whether to buy the full story, this might be a good taster. However while this is a real world horror, there are a few too many issues for it to rate highly for me on its own merits.