"Kevin Brooks fans won’t be disappointed"
By Alice / Spinebreakers Crew
There are two Dawns.
There’s the 13 year old Dawn Bundy, frozen as a haunted memory. Betrayed by someone she loved, someone she trusted. The Dawn who had her whole life snatched away from her, one cold December night. And there’s the 15 year old Dawn. The Dawn that people see, hear, avoid. The “Todger-Dodger” Dawn. The outcast. The Dawn who has to put up with the 13 year old Dawn. The Dawn who has to live with those memories.
The Dawn who’s going to kill God.
The first thing that I thought when I saw this book was how typical ‘Kevin Brooks’ it all seemed; the gripping yet debate causing title, the simple bold cover design, the controversial subject matter. And although I do have to say that ‘Killing God’ is a very typical Kevin Brooks book, and that Kevin Brooks fans won’t be disappointed, it definitely shows Kevin Brooks at his best, and I’m sure that ‘Killing God’ will hastily make it in being one of Brook’s bestsellers, along with Black Rabbit Summer and Being.
Killing God is a book about a teenage girl called Dawn Bundy. Right from the word ‘go’ we know that Dawn wants to take action and ‘kill’ God, but we only find out why she really wants to do this towards the end of the book. The problem Dawn has is that she can’t just wander up to God and shoot him, so she needs to kill the faith in his existence. I love the way this situation resolves itself, I think it’s so clever, although, admittedly, I didn’t really understand it whilst I was reading. In the book Dawn confronts one of the main debate causing questions, Why does God let bad things happen to good people? She also falls into a weird friendship with the schools two bad-assed girls, which she soon finds out has more behind it than meets the eye. For me it way one of those books that you spend more time thinking about it afterwards than actually reading, and when you understand how everything links together, you want to go tell everyone the plot, but try and stop yourself because the element of mystery is what really makes this book what it is.
One of the main things that makes ‘Killing God’ stand out as a good book to me is the way it embraces a few difficult subject matters without beating too much around the bush, one obviously being religion and faith in Christianity and more relevantly, God.
I can already guess that a lot of Christian readers will be put off in reading this book, but I think it’s important to remember that the opinions shown throughout are those of a 15 year old girl who has a good reason to believe, and be comforted in the thought, that someone is responsible for the horrific thing that happens to her.
I wouldn’t recommend this book to younger readers because I think the plot is just too distressing, but if you are older, I would give Kevin Brooks the benefit of the doubt here and just try it, no matter what your religious beliefs are because I can assure you that Dawn’s haunting story and the issues raised in this book will stick by you for a long time after you have finished the last page.