At the complete mercy of the contents of the book, I went blindly into reading. By the time I was a quarter way through, I had already gasped aloud and shaken my head in dismay more times than I could recall.

Nutting has a plain manner of speech that I find conveys the narrator's urges and inner thoughts quite well, as she makes even the most disgusting sentences feel like just another innocuous moment. This both repulsed and enthralled me, I had to keep reading to the next page to know what the big moments would be.

I have never been one to shy away from darker subject matter, but the way that Tampa characterizes the events leave me with the feeling of a slimy residue that I can't wash away. Maybe because the narrator's thoughts are put so plainly and explicitly, maybe because of the clear insight into how grooming might occur, but no matter how I may have resented and hated the narrator, I could never fault an author for making me experience such strong reactions, positive or negative.