Let's Go Play at the Adams

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The author is very good at getting into all the character's minds and succeeds in giving a good psychological portrayal of each of the protagonists in this, at times, quite harrowing, but no less enjoyable, story. Earn Your Happy Ending: Barbara's physical rescue comes easily enough, but it takes the rest of the book to emotionally overcome what happened to her. The torture methods are too elaborate, the killer is a machete-wielding clown… there’s something there that makes it difficult to believe in, something that tells you “this is fiction. I found that she become more emboldened with the incarceration of Barbara and enjoyed that she was involved with the entire process. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, because I think if you’re going to go on this journey, the less you know the better.

The enormous house is isolated on the Eastern shore of Maryland, with the closest neighbors being not very close. At its heart, ‘Let’s Go Play At the Adams’’ is exactly what horror is designed to do – make us think and look within ourselves. Light wear only to bright red boards with bright gilt titles on spine, edges tanned, light toning to end papers, pages are clean, binding is tight. Shocking and sickening, yet tender and nakedly human, you will never forget reading this one, I promise. After looking at the lurid cover pictured in Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction, I knew I had to find a copy.

Over the last few years and with the boost from Grady Hendrix and his release ‘Paperbacks From Hell’ there has been a resurgence in the classic books of horror, originating from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. But there is a reason it does not ever appear on anyone's list of most disturbing books ever read, or best horror novels ever read, while you hear about Ketchum's version of this story discussed all over the place. I have not read the book, so I can’t comment on whether its better/similar/worse than Let’s Go Play, but I have seen a number of people relate the two to having similar themes and scenes. Hendrix revisits a lot of the popular horror fiction of the 70's and 80s', and he gives Let's Go Play at the Adams' an entire 2 page spread. But what Barbara didn't count on was the heady effect their new-found freedom would have on the children.

When asked why they can’t just stop, they still give childish justifications like “we’re playing a game and you lost,” or “we just can’t, that’s all, we all voted.So, while I spend probably another decade considering whether I dare read this again, it will sit on my bookshelf where I know it can behave itself. Dianne does, at one point, grab and twist one of Barbara’s breasts, but up until then, Johnson has downplayed those scenes to a degree.

While this book sounds like it’s going to be a quick, dark story about the kidnapping and torture of a babysitter, it’s actually a lot slower than that and there isn’t a huge amount of the torture in front of our eyes.And just a final warning here – some of the subject matter may be difficult for some people to digest or read. It was brutal in its descriptions of what happened to her, and I felt like I somehow owed it to her to keep reading until the end. I can really only explain it (without spoilers) as taking a trip in the mind of each characters down a very dark path to which they all seem to be inevitably locked.

The first few times I’d seen this version online, I’d initially thought it was actually a plate of cookies, not a dolls’ head. Malcolm, his wife Sam and their two kids have been staying at the same cabin, at the same campground for years now. Then John, a 16-year-old boy who was part of the group who’d imprisoned her, took what she was saving for someone else.I’m sure back in the 70s this was some shocking shit all right, but I’ve read plenty of gross, shocking, and downright ‘Whaaaaat? The author appeared to be saying: actually, it's pretty easy for the right social pressures to turn normal kids into psychopaths. That they’re playing the game for real and not just pretending to hurt people only makes it more exciting, and it’s this weird lack of malice that makes it all the more awful that they’re doing these things. The kids range in age from 10 to 17, and Barbara is tasked with babysitting the Adams children, Bobby who is 13 and Cindy, while their parents are in Europe for a week.