Book Reviews: Daddy’s Curse by Luke G. Dahl

Trigger Warning: The subject of today’s review, Daddy’s Curse by Luke G. Dahl, depicts human trafficking, drug use, and rape. If you are under 18 years of age, are triggered by such depictions, and/or otherwise wish to avoid these topics, proceed with caution.

Happy Humpday, readers and writers! I’m not going to lie, I really feel under-the-weather today, but still want to bring you a new—and emotional—book for your consideration. In this post, I’m going to be reviewing Daddy’s Review: A Harrowing True Story of an Eight Year Old Girl Human Trafficking and Organized Crime Survivor by Luke G. Dahl.

Yuna was an ordinary eight-year-old girl living with her parents and younger sister in a small country home on the steppes of Mongolia. Then one day her world is shattered as a group of men kidnap her just outside her family’s house. The years which follow bring poor Yuna torture, rape, drugs, and abuse, with only one true friend to speak of and no light visible at the end of the tunnel. How will she survive these bleak events? Will she ever be free again? Or is this all that her life will ever be? And what really happened the day she was kidnapped all those years ago?

I have to warn that this book is not for the faint-of-heart. It is not overly-descriptive but it is descriptive enough that readers get a clear image of what these poor girls suffered through. Admittedly, I had a hard time reading the entire book; it’s only 76 pages—short enough to finish in a day—but I frequently had to take breaks in order to recover emotionally before I could continue.

This does not mean the book is bad. In fact, I argue the opposite. After all, in order for me to be so deeply affected by these terrors, I have to be able to connect with the people who suffer from them. I believe that Dahl does well on this front. I felt horrible for Yuna and the other girls, furious that no one would help them, and distraught that they very probably would never live normal lives again.

Honestly, given the emotionally hard time I had with some of the book, I’m glad that Dahl does not go into more detail on some of the horrors. For the most part, he chooses the right events to emphasize and lets the ones that are either too terrible for readers to stomach or which readers can understand without much description—or both—remain vague. Dahl also, for most of the book, maintains a brisk and engaging pace through this process of picking-and-choosing.

However, I wish that he had drawn out the last third of the book a little more. On the one hand, I’m a bit relieved that he didn’t because I’m not sure how much more of those scenes I could have taken. On the other hand, the pace was even quicker than earlier in the story, and that through me off some. It also would have helped if the “big reveal” had not been so abrupt, but I suppose that there’s not much to be done about that when it’s a true story. (I won’t discuss any more about that to avoid spoilers.)

Any pacing issues aside, this story is raw and honest, perhaps painfully so. Nothing—no one—is as it seems, and even through the eyes of the initially-naïve Yuna, readers know that almost immediately. Dahl’s ability to foreshadow while never stepping beyond the boundaries of first-person narration make this book even more tense and exciting than Yuna’s story already is. It made me want to keep reading despite knowing that relief was far, far off.

The praise for Dahl’s storytelling aside, I noticed multiple proofreading errors that sometimes interrupted my reading. Some of the errors I could brush aside as style choice in order to convey the voice of a young Mongolia girl, one whom I assume mostly spoke English as a second language. Still, not all of the errors could be attributed to stylistic choice. The overall quality of the story and the writing typically overpowered these mistakes, but I think that Dahl could have proofread better before publishing.

All in all, I think this book is great for those who can stomach the subject. The characters are real and have distinct personalities, well-rounded even without knowing much about their lives before being kidnapped, and Yuna’s narrative engages the reader with a candid, uncensored, ever-growing voice which makes them feel as though they’re listening to her tell the story in their own living room. Not everyone can handle the issues of human trafficking and rape, but I think it’s important to get these girls’ stories out and let people know that this does, indeed, still happen. If you want to understand this problem more, discover the human side of it, I highly recommend this short book.

You can obtain an eBook or paperback copy of Daddy’s Curse by Luke G. Dahl on Amazon.

Do you know of any books I should read? Want your work reviewed on this blog? E-mail me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com or message me on Fiverr and we can arrange something.