Reviewed by Tammy

TITLE: Caged Jaye                              

SERIES: Arctic Absolution, #.1

AUTHOR: Lynn Kelling

PUBLISHER: Fantastic Fiction Publishing

LENGTH: 176 Pages

RELEASE DATE: April 12, 2016

BLURB:

It’s Jaye Larson’s nineteenth birthday, and all he wants is to spend time with his boyfriend and his mother—the people he loves most and who make life worth living. But, faced by his mother’s demons, the imperfections of his relationship with boyfriend, Kris, and dangerous, homophobic strangers, one by one, all of Jaye’s dreams are soon derailed. Plunging into a waking nightmare, shortly after going to bed alone, he wakes in an alley, pinned down by two men with slow, bloody rape and murder in mind. It’s just the start of Jaye’s fight for his life, and his sanity, as time and time again, he’s forced to make impossible choices and survive, no matter what it costs.

Trigger Warning: There are detailed descriptions of multiple rapes and various other brutal attacks.

REVIEW:

Caged Jaye is an incredibly intense, emotionally dark book. You go through almost every emotion there is. The pain, both physical and emotional that is heaped on Jaye Larson at only 19 years of age is phenomenal.

Jaye lives with his boyfriend Kris Garrity, they don’t have much of anything but what they do have Jaye treasures. Jaye has worked for Rick & Pine a men’s clothing store for the last three years, working his way up from store boy to manager. Jaye was so proud of himself, he has a goal, to make enough money to be independent and nothing is going to stand in his way.

The night of his birthday Jaye finishes work at five, rushes to visit his mother, she’s passed out on the lounge from a major hit of something, he cleans her apartment a best he can because there are maggots and other vermin crawling around the kitchen over dirty dishes. Jaye’s mother, Cora is a drug addicted prostitute but Jaye loves her anyway because she’s his mum. When he finally makes it to his favourite diner for dinner with Kris all Kris could do was pick at him. Once they move past the angst to the more enjoyable prospect of his birthday dinner Jaye remembers that Kris will only be there for a short amount of time as he has to visit his parents for the weekend and Jaye was not invited. During dinner they are both reminded of the fact that there are homophobic bigots everywhere as two large, dirty men start calling them faggots and continually glare at them. By the time dinner is over and Kris has left for the train Jaye has forgotten all about the two men.

That is the last time Jaye sees or hears from Kris again.

The next thing Jaye is aware of is that he’s on his back in the alley beside his apartment block being raped and brutally attacked by the two men who called him and Kris faggots at the diner. The one who spoke to them is raping him whilst the other is egging him on and holding Jaye down. Jaye was thinking maybe he could get out of there alive until they bring out the knife and start cutting him whilst raping him! Somehow Jaye manages to hold on and kills the one raping him and stabs the one holding him down. Jaye honestly thought he had died until he woke in hospital and is being charged with attacking his attackers.

So begins the most brutal two years of Jaye’s life.

Needless to say Jaye gets convicted and is sent to prison. On the bus to prison Jaye can literally feel all of the stares and that’s when he realises that if he wants to survive his two year sentence he has to find the biggest, meanest man inside and offer himself to him in exchange for protection. How he survives is down to pure necessity, he learns to be as brutal as any of the hardened criminals in there. You wonder how the hell anyone could come away from the brutality sane.

Caged Jaye is not for the faint of heart. If you enjoy reading gritty, hard hitting story’s this is the book for you. Remember Caged Jaye is the prequel to Arctic Absolution. As Arctic Absolution was released Dec 2014, I would definitely recommend you read this book then read/reread Arctic Absolution.

RATING:  

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon

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