The Cellar, by Natasha Preston, is a very interesting but twisted book about a girl named Summer. The book is very fast paced and easy to get into, which makes it hard to put down. The Cellar is a very cynical book, but it’s amazing nonetheless. 

The book takes place in England on a gloomy summer day. Summer and her boyfriend are talking in her room while she gets ready to go to a party. Lewis, her boyfriend, does not want her walking to the part by herself, but Summer insists she will be okay. If she would have not been so stubborn then the book would play out completely different, but because she is so stubborn it gets her into a lot of trouble.

Summer was kidnapped while trying to look for her friend. A tall dark haired man named Colin, who renamed her Lily, kidnapped her. Colin is a very troubled man who is obsessed with having the perfect family. He kidnaps girls, puts them in his cellar, and names them after flowers. The cellar is made up to look like a cozy little house, but for the girls it is their own personal Hell.

He makes the girls call him Clover, and they are his perfect little flowers. Colin is a control freak and very obsessive. The girls are named after four flowers, Rose, Poppy, Violet, and Lily. He wants the girls to be “perfect”. They have to dress a certain way, eat a certain way, and behave a certain way. If they do not, he punishes them or even kills them. They have to be his idea of the perfect wife. If not, he gets rid of them. He does this because he is insane, but also because his father cheated on his mother. He takes it out on women he thinks are wrong. The girls he take though are perfect to him, and sometimes he takes them and thinks they just need a little bit of improvement. Other times he will take women and kill them because he blames those “type” of women. By those type he means women who wear to much makeup or tight fitting clothing.

The characters in the book are just very real. People can relate to them in some type of way like Summer is a stubborn, independent teen who has a funny outgoing boyfriend. The characters aren’t sugar coated though. They have problems like people do in real life. Colin is a great example of this. He is obsessive and compulsive. In other word he is very OCD and Bipolar. His disorders are very extreme, but many people have these same problems. The characters are relatable and are like people you may meet in everyday life.

The book was very exciting and fun to read. It was easy to get into, and when I started reading it I never wanted to put it down. It sometimes creeped me out though, but I like when books make me feel something. If they don’t trigger an emotion then it’s hard for me to get into them. It is one of my favorite books and I’m very excited to read the next book Preston comes out with. I would definitely recommend this book to others, and if they do read it I hope the enjoy it as much as I did.