Cry Baby Cry..... or Not by Dewandus Johnson

Cry Baby Cry..... or Not by Dewandus Johnson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Cry Baby Cry or Not by DeWandus Johnson had me shaking in my boots in a matter of moments. I felt chills down my spine as I read. I love me some crime stories; however, this was a lot for me to handle. The first few paragraphs of the material, literally had me exclaim, wow! I had to read again to be sure I read that correctly. This material has everything from manslaughter, abuse, drugs, prostitution, women and child trafficking, sex; basically, any crime you can imagine.

The story surrounds a young girl brought up in a dysfunctional home. At a young age, she got maltreated by individuals that should protect her. Accordingly, she made not so wise decisions; after all, nobody taught her to do better. This material gave me a great deal of Gotham vibes, the main catch is that the focus was not on corrupt police, but on the society were wrongdoing was the other of the day.

I like this story; however, this material holds some characteristics that I found disturbing. To begin with, I like the composing style of this essayist. It is something I am not used to, and I am not mad at it. It was like an introduction to a whole new style of writing, and I appreciated it a lot.

Secondly, as a non-American reader, this material has opened my eyes to the comprehension of what "Gang, and Gang members" are. I had the option to see through the perspective of one who sounds to be no stranger to the system, and can articulately enlighten a novice like me. Even though most characters in the book were somewhat disturbed, I like the way this book gave me a whole different perspective of life. The events recorded in the book are new to me; however, this material brought me to the reality of happenings in someone else's life.

Some not so good things I discovered about this book is the fact that it has errors here and there, even in the area with reference, there was a spelling error. For instance, “Ceily from the movie The Color Purple”. The name of the character is Celie, not Ceily. Furthermore, there are lots of punctuation errors and minor typo errors. It is safe to say; this book needs editing. Other instances are school.Jackie instead of school. Jackie, case worker instead of caseworker, signaled instead of signalled, etc.

Furthermore, I don't like the fact that I did not get a description of the protagonist much earlier in the book. I found myself trying to put a face on some characters majorly because emphasizes went to their abstract features first. Telling me; “She looked like she could be the twin sister of singer Alicia Keys", does not explain to me who she is. I want to know if she is black, Latina, or mixed.

I am not a fan of the content (language specifically). Murder scenes and children molestation described excessively. Words like bl--dy, a--h--e, f--k, mo---rf---er and d***, among others were spoken many times. I understand that this feature comes with most books in the genre, but boy, it was too much.

Finally, this material was super graphic. Overly described violence and sex scenes are a significant part of this book. At some point, I wanted to throw up.

Overall, I rate this book 2 out of 5. I like the story; however, it is not one of those books I would like to read again. I recommend this book purely for adults. If you have suffered from any form of abuse, I will say you stay away from this material as it can be a trigger.

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Paperback, 336 pages
Published March 4th 2014 by Royal Roar Publishing
ISBN1630680907 (ISBN13: 9781630680909)