I was scared to read this book. The description on the back cover coupled with a disturbing child-like drawing that was included with my copy of the novel left me feeling very uneasy and downright frightened to read it. Nevertheless, I mustered up my courage and opened it up. Surprisingly, I found I did not want to put it down.
In This Way I Was Saved is the story of Luke. Someone earning a psychology degree from an online accredited university would probably understand what is going on with Luke. Luke is a child who develops what I can only attempt to describe as an separate personality during a traumatic moment in his childhood. This "other" begins to grow stronger and becomes an embodiment of the sinister, the carnal, and the dangerous side of Luke's psyche. Eventually, this id-like character is banished to the recesses of Luke's mind, only to remain dormant until a time when he can return to fight for complete control over Luke's existence.
This psychological thriller really grabbed me from the get-go because of the narration style. The reader "sees" the story through the eyes of Daniel, the alternate personality or entity that resides within Luke. We experience Luke's successes, conflicts, failures, and horrors, but skewed by the lens of Daniel's narration. The question of whether or not the narrator can be considered reliable is certainly debatable and he remains a mystery right up to the last page of this novel. Nevertheless, we identify with Daniel and willingly join him on the journey into the dark recesses of Luke's (and his) mind. The reader is constantly being challenged to determine what is real and what is imagined or if, in fact, there actually is a true reality for these characters. DeLeeuw even provides us with a twist at the end that leaves us questioning whether we really ever had this book all figured out in the first place!
I found In This Way I Was Saved to be unique, intoxicating, and terrifying. If you're looking for a book that will mess with your head in a similar fashion as Palahniuk's Fight Club, give this one a go. It's delightfully twisted.
4 Stars!
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Sounds like Fight Club, in a good way.
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