I felt like this was a short story that was trying way too hard to fit into the Splatterpunk genre. It was very theatrical and over the top not a realistic performance that took me so long to finish the book. There was a lot more talking between the characters about what they were going to do to the family and not much of actually doing. All they really did was tied up the family, punched them around a bit, broke/cut off some kids fingers, and of course verbally tortured them ((view spoiler)[ they also took so much time on the daughter and making fun of what they were finding on her phone which I thought was not the way to go to keep a home invasion story going (hide spoiler)]). So if you like Splatterpunk to be more about humiliation rather than actual gore, this would be the book I would recommend, but personally, I would like to see more actual torture and if you're going to get into their heads, make it psychological torture not silly little high school humiliation drama.
It was also sometimes hard for me to distinguish between the male attackers as it seemed like they all had the same personality. This is even after we were told early on in the story one of them didn’t want to participate and he only did out of… FOMO?... peer pressure?... I’m still not sure(view spoiler)[ because out of the entire group, he was the first one to really kill someone… twice (hide spoiler)].
The epilogue was(view spoiler)[ a nice revenge ending, but it was one of those you saw coming from a mile away. It was also kind of silly that the leader of the whole invasion didn't go one to kill more in any way. You don't just start with a killing like this and cold turkey end with it. Again, it made it so theatrical and eye rolling worthy. (hide spoiler)]
It was also sometimes hard for me to distinguish between the male attackers as it seemed like they all had the same personality. This is even after we were told early on in the story one of them didn’t want to participate and he only did out of… FOMO?... peer pressure?... I’m still not sure(view spoiler)[ because out of the entire group, he was the first one to really kill someone… twice (hide spoiler)].
The epilogue was(view spoiler)[ a nice revenge ending, but it was one of those you saw coming from a mile away. It was also kind of silly that the leader of the whole invasion didn't go one to kill more in any way. You don't just start with a killing like this and cold turkey end with it. Again, it made it so theatrical and eye rolling worthy. (hide spoiler)]