The Eighth Day
M. M. Dos Santos
Self-published
June 1, 2016
Reviewed by A. Renee Hunt
WARNING: This book is NOT for everyone! It’s of the horror genre, but I wouldn’t quite call it horror — The Eighth Day by M. M. Dos Santos is a book like no other.
The story focuses on a girl named Lili and her family’s strict Jehovah’s Witness practices. She’s hearing voices and seeing things that no teenager should see, but as it turns out, she’s not the only one — other people about the area and things hear them too. They all play a particular part in the message that’s being sent and all of it is vulgar, violent and disgusting. For example, one of thw characters, Arnold, is being lead by voices to play with innocent victims, but in this context, playing means brutally raping girls and women, then mutilating them while alive. All of this is supposedly taking place because Armageddon has come and gone with no appearance of God. Each occurrence is part of a plan taking root by the demons who remained on earth.
I think this book could have been magnificent. The premise wasn’t lost on me, but the way it was carried out and the things that took place were monstrous! None of it made me squirm or fidget, it was just purely disgusting. I’m not going to lie, this book did nothing for me. There have been just two books that were so gross, I was unhappy with them, and one I stopped reading. I didn’t find The Eighth Day entertaining, and the horror wasn’t horror at all. Well, let me rephrase that: What took place was horrific but not the kind I enjoy reading about. It took me way too long to read this because I couldn’t look forward to it.
I didn’t like any of the characters based on the fact that none were even likable. The main character, Lili, was in complete denial, whether she was agnostic, a Jehovah’s Witness or whatever she’d imagined. And she knew playing with the demonic readings only invited the nightmares, but she did it anyway. As for Arnold, the character who enjoyed raping and mutilating women, he was pure evil to the core. The author tried to explain why he was the way he was, but it didn’t help much.
Unfortunately, I have nothing good to really say about this book except that the author was very creative and knew what he wanted to bring about. The Eighth Day simply wasn’t for me.
