There's No Place Like Home

by A.G. Cascone

After killing her abusive biological parents, the young woman who had been at the center of the notorious "Baby D" custody battle returns to take revenge on the people who separated her from her loving adoptive mother, and to resume the life she lost when she and her "mommy" were forcibly parted.

Genres: Horror

237 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

The team of Annette Cascone and Gina Cascone, sisters.

Reviews

[Nattie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a good story about a child, "Baby D", who had been adopted and then given back to her abusive biological parents. I did have a major problem with this book, I don't really understand how this is a YA book. Most of the main characters are teenagers, but that doesn't matter. The murders of innocent children were written about so casually in graphic enough detail to be quite disturbing.
Of course I'm not going to tell who Baby D is, and after a while I got tired of the story and really started not to care who she actually was. Returning to town 18 years later to seek revenge on all those who stole the life that she was supposed to have became quite annoying after a spell. Lots of red herrings here. The formula of the book was also eye-roll inducing. It alternates between regular chapters and chapters focused on Baby D, Baby D must have been said a quatillion times, along with the word yeah. Heres an example of what I mean:

"Baby D would have given anything to push Dennis' little girl even higher than her mommy was pushing her. Yeah. Baby D wanted to push Baby D's little girl so high that she would fly right out of Baby D's swing and go soaring across the yard until she landed head first on the concrete walkway cracking her little skull, yeah."

Yeah, came after every single sentence that Baby D said or thought. Baby D's gonna do this. Yeah. Baby D did that. Yeah. Baby D would get even. Yeah. Baby D was cheated. Yeah. Baby D would make them pay. Yeah. ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG! Yeah.

[Matthew MacIntyre · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I feel this book has most of the same flaws as Cascone’s previous book In a Crooked Little House, I feel this one was an overall better book. I will say the use of an alias to cover up the identity of the bad guy. This time Baby D was annoying and the one to many red herrings and twists just to come out to the obvious ending was a bit much. Following the Baby as she wants to reunite with her Mommy, from whom she was taken away from as a kid was pretty liner in story was so convoluted in the twists that pet of me wanted it to be over. And the other negative aspect is that you don’t sympathize with them in the slightest. Not graphic at all but there were more children deaths in this book than I can recall in other ya horror. While I liked the other characters better and the story was an improvement I don’t think I’m a fan of Cascones writing.

[Leslie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok, I don't normally give such low ratings but this just didn't do it for me at all. There were child murders and abductions....and what seemed to be an incestuous relationship. Baby D was CJs daughter, but she sparked up a romantic relationship with CJ's son Kyle...? Nope, not my cup of tea at all. Also, it was hard to keep up with all the characters. What exactly was Trudy's role? Why even have Dee Ann and Snake as characters at all? And the vagueness throught the book of who Baby D really was, but yet giving us these "clues" to throw you off was meh. The plot twist was totally unexpected, so there's that....and throwing in Renee as a distraction from the main villain was a good idea as well, I suppose. But again, this book bounced from character to character too often and I feel like there could have been less people involved in the plot.