2 out of 4 stars
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Growing up in an abusive home with a chaotic childhood can make the transition into adulthood difficult for anyone, but things are especially bad for Asha, the main character in Unfinished Business 2 by Lacrecia Hillis. Published in April of 2019 and the continuation of the first story, Unfinished Business 2 read well as a stand-alone novella. At just under 30 pages on the print edition, I was able to read the story in one sitting.
The main character, Asha, was forced to grow up in a home that resembles pure chaos while also spending most of her time feeling as if she needed to be protecting her mother from her abusive father. With the obvious signs of abuse consistently covering her mother's body, Asha's main goal is to keep her mother as safe as she possibly can. Without sharing the brutal information about the traumatic sexual, physical and emotional abuse she's also suffered, Asha knows she has to get away. Knowing she needs to leave, but unable to leave her mother in her childhood home with a monster, Asha forces herself to stay and endure the abuse longer than she should. When she's given a chance to get away for a while, Asha takes the opportunity to build up her strength and stamina for when she's finally able to confront her poor excuse for a father.
While I'm not able to comprehend the life that childhood abuse of this severity would cause, I certainly felt the pain of the main character. Her devotion to her mother is prominent in the story, but so is her desire to get away from the madness and make a life for herself. The theme of the story was consistently dark, which is to be expected with a story of this type. I feel the need to give a reader's discretion, as the story involves some sexually explicit scenes, as well as possible triggering factors such as rape and abuse.
While the story was fairly short, I was surprised at the author's ability to get such a developed premise underway in such a short amount of pages. My main complaint with the story, though, comes with the lack of editing. There were multiple grammatical errors throughout, such as the incorrect use of "your" vs "you're" and "too" vs "to," which did become rather repetitive throughout. There was also an incident of a rather awkward chapter placement where one chapter ended in the middle of a sentence and the next chapter picked up right where the prior left off.
Despite the numerous editing errors I found throughout, I was overall fairly satisfied with the development of Unfinished Business 2. I feel like if the story went through another round of editing to clear up some easily resolved errors, this would really be a story that many could enjoy. For Unfinished Business 2, I give a rating of 2 out of 4 stars. I hesitated with this rating, mostly because it seemed a bit unfair to only give 2 stars due mainly to editing reasons, but there are so many that I feel as if it did take away from the story in general.
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Unfinished Business 2
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