Hurt: A Novel

If you should ever happen upon a quite little remote mountain community with the sign welcoming you to Solitary, turn around. Do not enter and forget you ever saw this place. In fact, Solitary is just that, a place that longs to be kept a silent secret. Isolated. Alone. Just like the name implies. However for Chris Buckley, it's a town he can't escape. It's a town that has ties to him that bind the soul. One he has been desperately searching for a way out of only to be brought to the conclusion of where he finds himself at now. At the final chapter. The climatic ending of an epic story of old.

Some call Solitary a gateway, but for Chris Solitary isn't a gateway drug. Nope, Solitary is crack and heroin and every other drug blended together and served as an ice cream cone. However the town of Solitary was discovered by an original settler who the town is named after. The wicked man who already knew and believed in evil. It was as if this town called for him. But it is why Chris is so valuable. He is needed to combat the evil that is slowly consuming the town and it's residents.

But if you have picked up this book and wondering where it all begins, where can I begin to fill you in? It's three in the morning, and so far baby dearest hasn't managed to crawl up the stairs with a steak knife. Let's see - I move to Solitary and fall in love with the girl that the evil people have decided to sacrifice on New Year's Eve. Before this sacrifice happened I met my mother's creepy aunt Alice with her selection of mannequins. Perhaps this doll escaped from her house.

I saw a weird mountain man with a big German shepherd who ended up being my uncle in costume. The man, that is. Not the dog. There were the nightmares my mother had. There were tunnels underneath our cabin. Oh yeah, don't forget the cabin in the woods. Or the mannequin maker.

There's the creepy pastor and the ignorant bully. But both answer to a twisted man named Staunch who answers to my great-grandfather. And they all say I'm special and that somewhere down the road I'm going to get a special key that does something special for a special reason. Welcome to the fourth book, Hurt by Travis Thrasher. This is the fourth book in the Solitary Tales series and should not be read as a stand alone book. To read it by itself would simply cause you to be confused because you need to know what has happened to bring Chris Buckley to his final year in Solitary.

This book is the culmination of everything Chris has had to endure to bring him to this point. When he first arrived in Solitary in book one, he was very much the outcast being the new kid in high school Alone and isolated much like the city. However as the books progress we find out that something sinister has been brewing and a spiritual war is about to be unleashed. Think of this series as Travis Thrasher describes it like Pretty in Pink meets The Exorcist. I couldn't think of a finer way to sum up this series.

I received Hurt by Travis Thrasher compliments of Christian Blog Alliance and David C Cook Publishers for my honest opinion. It is written from Chris' point of view and thus you are dealing with the impressions one would expect from a boy in high school trying to fit in. It seems like he can't do anything right and he is always on someones bad side from the local sheriff to the pastor and even his mother when she is sober. Yet I viewed this fourth and  final book, having read all three books in this series, as Chris' absolution. He realizes he can't run from his problems and has to deal with them alone. I can't share with you how it ends, but definitely could see more books launched from this series. A well-deserved and earned 5 out of 5 stars! For those of you that like a good suspense thriller with a powerful message, pick up the entire series. For readers like me that love this genre, it was well-worth the ride.

For more information about Hurt: A Novel, Travis Thrasher or where to pick up a copy of this book today, please click on the links below:

Hurt: A Novel by Travis Thrasher

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The Solitary Tales by Travis Thrasher - Available at your favorite book retailer:
#1 - Solitary
#2 - Gravestone
#3 - Temptation
#4 - Hurt