Slice of Cherry

By: Dia Reeves

Narrated by: Suzy Jackson

Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Kit and Fancy Cordelle are sisters of the best kind: best friends, best confidantes, and best accomplices. The daughters of the infamous Bonesaw Killer, Kit and Fancy are used to feeling like outsiders, and that's just the way they like it.

But in Portero, where the weird and wild run rampant, the Cordelle sisters are hardly the oddest or most dangerous creatures around. It's no surprise when Kit and Fancy start to give in to their deepest desire: the desire to kill. What starts as a fascination with slicing open and stitching up quickly spirals into a gratifying murder spree. Of course, the sisters aren't killing just anyone, only the people who truly deserve it. But the girls have learned from the mistakes of their father, and know that a shred of evidence could get them caught.

So when Fancy stumbles upon a mysterious and invisible doorway to another world, she opens a door to endless possibilities.

©2011 Dia Reeves (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Fans of Reeves’ first novel, Bleeding Violet... will relish a second...glimpse at the deeply fascinating town of Portero and its bizarre, memorable residents." (Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books)

Love it!

This book is terrifying, complex, and wonderfully written. It's one of my new favorites now. I wish there were more than 2 Portero books!

Intriguing

I absolutely loved this book! The narrator did each characters own voices. I love when they do that. The book itself was great especially for this time of year.

Surreal, riveting tale

What a surreal story, but a fascinating one. Dia Reeves has written this book for teens but adults will find it interesting too. Enter the strange and twisted landscape of Portero and meet the teenage daughters of a serial killer, Kit and Fancy. The world Kit and Fancy live in is revealed piece by piece, and a spooky one it is. The town populace take all the strange happenings in their town as normal, such as rampaging monsters, plants that grow only where a body is buried, strange beasts in the nearby forbidding forest and a tree that grants wishes. Kit and Fancy have to deal with being shunned due to their father having killed so many people. They also have to deal with their own issues of growing up.
The reader, Suzy Jackson, is very good, though I almost had a difficult time with her voice. Oddly, she didn't "sound" quite right for this book. I really like her vocal characterizations, but for me, her voice wasn't the best fit.

Where's the movie adaptation?

Gonna be honest. I couldn't get into this initially because I didn't think the voice matched the sorry but I got used to it. This was dark & strange like Reeve's first novel Bleeding Violet there were definitely twists I didn't see coming. Great book!

Great for when you want to turn your brain off.

I read the physical copy of this book for the first time when I was in middle school and it's stuck in the back of my mind ever since. I've consistently come back to it every couple of years like clockwork. Not, I think, because the storyline itself is particularly impressive, but because of how gory, fantastical, and wonky it is; it brings me back to when I was younger and it was easier to suspend my disbelief. Anything is possible in Portero. Whether it be raising the dead, stepping into different realities, or rolling up an old man like a tube of toothpaste; anything goes.

The Cordell sisters are a car wreck in motion; terrible and impossible to look away from. Magical, and bloody, and murderous. It's kind of hard to say whether I really like them as characters, but they're too different to be boring.

It's my first time listening to the audio book version and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. I know that a few people had complaints about the narrator and the accent she gave the girls, but it didn't bother me, and it wasn't the narrator's fault. The physical copy of the book includes their accents and I personally didn't find it distracting after the first 10 or so minutes.

Anyway, I don't typically leave reviews, so sorry for the sporadic formatting and stuff, but I really like this book. it's a nostalgic fever dream that left me not wanting to wake up, and I wish that there were another story centered around the Cordell sisters. If you do give it a try; go into it knowing that it's going to be ridiculous and be prepared to say "It's in the script." a lot.

Also, I do want to say that there is a LOT of weird flirting in this book between the girls and two boys around their age. The overtly sexual nature of the flirting and infantilization of Fancy in particular gives off weird vibes at times; especially considering that the girls are only 15 and 16.
The story does also touch on grooming and childhood sexual abuse. I wouldn't say that it's particularly graphic when describing the abuse, but it is disturbing, so I wanted ti give fair warning.

Great book!

Very entertaining. Read the book, but I’m so glad I downloaded it. So much better with the narrator.

Be Prepared to Send It Back

This was an incredibly unsatisfying read.

My biggest pet peeve: the author and the characters are black. Unfortunately, the narrator opted to use this heavily weighted undeniably white Texan hillbilly sounding accent. I recommend that you listen to a sample first and verify that you can tolerate that voice for 10 hours.

Also, this is Young Adult. If you're not into teenage angst, unrealistic and exaggerated family dynamics, and okay with sitting through scene after scene of a 15 year old experiencing sexual activity-- skip it.

There's ZERO world building. Potero, the town, is a weird place where monsters break out of the ground, there are doorways through mirrors and reflective surfaces to other worlds, and you can non chanlantly play with a severed head in the street. Maybe that's your thing... but with no world building, the author throws random stuff into the story and you're just forced to accept it at face value. It's inconsistent and frustrating. Especially because it's not like that anywhere else in the story's universe! It's *just* this town. Today, we're having an exorcism, because... huh. Tuesday! Why not? Note: I did not read Bleeding Violet. I guess there's better world building in that book.

The characters are outright unlikable. Plus, it's chapter after chapter of reaaaaaaally colorful and gory Hostel/SAW styled violence. It's literally like, "huh! What's the most ridiculous way that I can kill this person involving lava, wild boar, and a carousel."

This was terrible. Truly terrible.

Oh! Content Warnings: gratuitous violence, several instances/references/scenes depicting sexual assault against a child, extreme violence against children