Chatroom with a View by Glenn Maynard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Troy Cullen comes from a dysfunctional family that is barely held together by his mother. His father is abusive to Troy’s mom and is downright cruel to Troy. His upbringing has made it difficult for Troy to socialize well with others and he prefers to keep to himself. When Troy comes home from work one day and discovers that his mother is dead something in him suddenly snaps and he starts to spiral out of control.

Then to make matters worse his ex-girlfriend Veronica pops back into his life and announces that she is pregnant. This is a girl that has not been able to understand that he does not want a relationship with her and that he wants nothing to do with because he thinks that she is crazy. Veronica has no intention of going anywhere and intends to make Troy love her so they can be a perfect, happy little family. Troy feels as though he can no longer control anything in his life. Now that tiny thread that has kept Troy from losing controlled has broken and Troy sets out to seek revenge on everyone that has ever hurt him.

The closer Veronica gets to Troy and his family the more she realizes that something is not quite right. She has questions about his family, so she starts to dig into Troy’s family history. That is when she discovers the killer gene that gets passed down from generation to generation. This concerns Veronica because she is worried about how it will affect their baby, but she loves Troy and wants to make things work.

This book plunges you deep into the story from the very first pages and hooks you right from the get-go! I have never read a book that sucked me in and held my attention like this one! I took Criminology in College and am an avid reader of True Crime books, so this book caught my eye, and I knew that I had to read it. It was impossible to put down and took so many twists and turns that I had no choice but to continue reading to find out what happened next.

The characters in this book were ones that the reader cannot fall in love with nor relate to but they are intriguing. Troy comes across initially as being meek, mild, and perhaps a bit mousy. However, when the one person he truly loves dies something in him snaps and his dark side comes out. Years of trauma and abuse that he has pushed down have surfaced and he can no longer contain them. You can understand why Troy has snapped based on how he was bullied and abused through school as well as at home, so you want to feel empathy for him, but his actions make that impossible. It is obvious that he should have sought counselling in his earlier years but if there is indeed a killer gene in his family then perhaps counselling would have been useless anyhow.

Veronica is a girl that cannot and will not take no for an answer. This quality in others might be commendable but in Veronica it is clearly not the case. She is obsessed with Troy and resorts to stalking and bullying her way into his life. Veronica intends to make Troy hers and will stop at nothing to make that happen. When she starts talking to Troy’s father, she uncovers some dark family secrets that make her want to know more. Rather than run from the crazy family with the killer gene, Veronica embraces it and immerses herself farther into Troy’s life.

This book was a fast-paced, grab-ahold-of your-seats, intense psychological thriller that plunges you deep into the dark and troubling world of a boy who suffered abuse, bullying, and trauma from a young age. It leaves you feeling sorry for the way Troy was treated throughout his life and at the same time perplexed that he took such a dark path to deal with the abuse. My emotions were all over the map as I tried to figure out the complex character of Troy and determine whether the trauma was what motivated him or if it was the killer gene that he was unable to control. The way the different storylines melded and wove themselves together kept me riveted. I felt the ending left the book open to a sequel with what may become of Veronica and Troy. Will their story continue? Will Troy continue on his path of mayhem and destruction, leaving bodies in his wake? If Troy has the killer gene which makes it impossible for him to stop then it would not be out of the realm of possibility for him to become a serial killer. Now, that would be an intense sequel. Perhaps he ends up with Veronica by his side after all? This is not only a fantastic read, but it would make an amazing movie! Highly Recommend!

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