Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The Grim-Raynetta J. Stocks

The Grim


Raynetta J. Stocks

Dog Ear Publishing, Mar 30 2012, $19.99

http://dogearpublishing.net

ISBN: 9781457509971



Jaycee Baynes misses her son Noah, but knows she is going nowhere as she is a resident of the Grim psychiatric facility. She does not remember killing her lover Tony who haunts her, but cannot recall shooting him numerous times. Jay worries about her delicate best friend Maddy at the institution and wonders whether Aaron who says he loves her will still want her as a notorious murderous lunatic.



Though he believes Jaycee does not want to mentally heal as she never cooperates, facility director Dr. Stewart assigns Dr. Tina Roarke to try to get through to her. With Tina’s help, psychotic Jaycee struggles with a need to know what happened that led to her killing Tony, but ironically she believes only Tony can help set her free.



Aptly titled, this deep character study of a mentally ill individual is an insightful tale as the reader gets inside the head of Jaycee and a close up of a psychiatric facility symbolized by the lights out bureaucratic operating procedure that metamorphic denotes lights out on hope. The action is limited, as the storyline focuses on the protagonist’s struggles to regain her mind by recovering her repressed memory of what happened on that fatal day. Readers will root for Jaycee (and Maddy) while hissing at night nurse Evelyn as life inside the Grim is grim for patients and caregivers.



Harriet Klausner

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