Cassandra Connelly believes she's mean and that someone she truly hates deserves to die. She's in therapy to decide whether to kill this person or not.
Cassandra Connelly looks like a normal twenty-four-year-old girl. She seems sweet and shy. She works hard in two jobs and still finds time to do volunteer work. Nonetheless, there's something wrong within her. She has a lot of anger boiling inside, and a very problematic past, making her a dark, twisted woman.
She hides her true self from the world, but there's someone Cassandra hates so much, she has been thinking of doing something unspeakable: killing this person.
To her, killing this person is absolutely necessary, for he or she should not be alive. However, since she is still not sure about doing it or not, she seeks help. She goes to a psychiatrist in order to make a decision: should she continue hiding her meanness and being a normal girl, or should she let the meanness win and kill this person she believes deserves to die?
In this contemporary piece of fiction, we'll find out how badly child abuse and a dysfunctional family can transform a life for worse, much worse.
Mean is a novelette (longer than a short-story but shorter than a novella).
ADVICE: CONTAINS VIOLENT SCENES AND HARSH LANGUAGE
Professional Reviews
Mean Thrills (By Martha Bryce - Amazon)
Mean is a great little novelette. A young woman starts to see a psychologist because she is worried that her meanness is going to drive her to commit murder, a murder that she hopes the psychologist can guide her to avoid committing. The murder that the young woman feels compelled to commit, however is not random but specific to a person who she feels is responsible for having ruined her life. As the story unfolds, more details of the young woman's horrific past are revealed, building to a carefully constructed crescendo of calculated madness. This is a compelling, well written read and a true psychological thriller!
By Monica Akinyi Odhiambo (goodreads)
That was so unexpected.I never expected it would turn out the way it did.This book just goes to show you how upbringing and environment can affect how children turn up.I could so relate to what Cassandra was going through,even if I haven’t gone through what she did.But we all have some feelings within us that makes us so dark sometimes.All part of life.I loved this short novel,Amazing.
A Chilling and Captivating Novelette (goodreads)
Despite being a novelette, Mean by Renata F. Barcelos is captivating from the very first sentence. It starts off with the reader being let into the chilling mind of Cassandra Connelly, hinting at the deep but downright scary thoughts to come.
The unique style of writing makes this thriller even more exciting, as Cassandra could well be talking to the reader themselves. We soon find out that the whole story is her side of the conversation with her therapist and because the reader is seeing the whole thing through Cassandra’s eyes, it makes it even more chilling, especially as she has the urge to kill someone.
This mystery person who has angered Cassandra is only revealed at the end, keeping the reader literally on the edge of their seat. There are hints here and there as to who this person is, and you might not be as surprised at the end when all is revealed.
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