Bradley

by Jonah Frick

Bradley Gaff is your average eleven-year-old boy with unique telekinetic abilities and a secret alter ego. His life was pretty normal besides the severe trauma he endured from abusive foster parents and government experiments forced on him at an early age. Bradley was also present when his adopted mother killed her husband and then put the shotgun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Detective Barnes senses there is more to the case, but he has nothing to go on since Bradley doesn’t remember a thing.
After his parents' shocking murder-suicide, the FBI moves Bradley into a special school for future criminals They assigned him a newly hired social worker named Max to help him cope with his past trauma. Although Max never wanted to work with kids in the past, the two bonded. Max senses something isn’t right with the school that hired him. Something isn’t right with Bradley and whoever (or whatever) else lives inside of him. Everyone from the FBI, a narcissistic superintendent, and a power-hungry Warden want to tap into Bradley’s supernatural gifts to control him. Finally, it’s up to a disgruntled detective, an anxious child protective service agent, and a down-on-his-luck therapist to help free Bradley—from himself.

Hardcover

Published May 27, 2022

Reviews

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bradley Book Review Video

Content Warnings: blood; murder; nightmares; substance use; slurs; mentions of overdosing; suicide; mind control; child death; child abuse; mentions of sexual assault involving a child; torture; possession; and head trauma.

PLOT

Plot-wise, the book started off strong, with the mystery of who really killed Bradley’s parents since the main eyewitness, Bradley himself, did not recall much. It made for a wonderful start along with giving the reader hints that a supernatural element was in play. For instance, Bradley may have used telekinesis in the first chapter to throw away an orange peel but it is never fully revealed.

Further into the book however, more sci-fi elements were added which just got confusing after a while. Not only was there alien possession, but there were also time-travel, paradoxes, secret government experiments, wormholes, and dream tablets used to access the subconscious. After a while what started out as a supernatural murder-mystery was jumbled with how many ideas were packed into it. Not to mention at least four PoVs!

Personally, the story would have been streamlined and easier to follow if there had been only one or two sci-fi elements along with focusing more on Bradley’s PoV. Angel and Max could’ve gotten their own time to shine in Book Two rather than crammed into the story when some of their chapters could’ve been cut.

Regardless, I was able to piece everything together well enough and the ending was packed with action! I especially liked how each character had their own arc no matter how brief.

WRITING

For the writing, it reminded me of some very popular horror authors. There were plenty of visual descriptions especially when it came to comparisons to help the reader gain a better mental picture. For instance, there was one line that compared Detective Barnes’s racing mind to a child with a sugar-rush which was a funny image.

Jonah was also not afraid to let his writing get dark as several of the adults were noted to have abused children and the school itself had a history that implied children being tortured to death. Touching on those themes would have been fine but after a while, it became excessive. When a third adult in the school was revealed to have sexually assaulted a child it felt less like a look at neglect and exploitation that has happened in “reform” schools throughout history and more like a cheap short-hand to make the reader instantly dislike a character.

Another major issue I had with the writing was that one of the minor characters ended up accidentally being a Mammy stereotype. Jonah did inform me that this character was based on someone he knew in real life—and to be fair it is rare but people can fall into stereotypes. However I do wish that this character was expanded upon with her own wants and problems so she wasn’t just a Black woman who loved cooking and taking care of foster kids.

All that said, it was still an entertaining read and all the villains did get what was coming to them in the end.

WORLD-BUILDING

Honestly, I’m not sure where to start with world-building. As mentioned in the plot section, there was just so much that it got all tangled up. Although all the sci-fi bits eventually fed into each other, it still felt bloated and left too many questions unanswered.

For instance, the reader is introduced to dream tablets early on which are essentially acid-like tablets that a person puts under their tongue to get a message via a dream. However it was later revealed that a message could be pre-recorded and the answer for how that was possible was merely “time travel and alien technology “. Personally, I would have liked to have that and other sci-fi concepts expanded upon in the sequel.

The ideas were creative but I felt like they were also vague and too much got put into book one all at once, especially near the end.

CHARACTERS

BRADLEY/JEFFERY

As one of the main characters, Bradley was…interesting to say the least. What stood out to me the most was that he did not exactly know how to feel around the death of his foster parents (understandable given they were abusive) and his troubled attitude in general. Besides being a diabetic, Bradley also had what appeared to be Savant Syndrome, though whether that was real or part of the demonic entity remains to be known.

For as much page time as his character got however, I do wish that Bradley’s lesser flaws stood out more. Besides being a tad arrogant and impulsive, it was difficult to pick up on Bradley’s more subtle negative traits. For instance, near the middle of the book, Bradley used the demon to kill another child but there was not much build up to that. Before then, everything bad happening was the demon taking control and locking Bradley out of his own consciousness.

Which was why having Bradley going from not recalling terrible events to straight-up premeditated murder felt like tonal whiplash. Especially since taking the life of another human being—no matter how awful that person was—takes overcoming a lot of mental roadblocks since humans naturally do not want to seriously hurt each other. There’s a reason why soldiers are given resources to help them cope with the trauma of shooting someone even if it is justified by the military as self-defense.

Beyond Bradley’s sudden thirst for power however, he was an okay main character. I did not connect with him as strongly as the others but I still wanted to see him succeed in dealing with his demonic other half. I do wonder what will become of him in the sequel.

MAX

As the second main point-of-view, Max was a punching bag for most of the book. Not only was the poor therapist fired in the first chapter the reader met him in but he later wrecked his car on the way to his new job at Bradley’s boarding school. Max also has a past history of addiction and his partner overdosed which also killed his unborn child. However, despite his tragic past, Max clearly cared for the kids he was working with to the point where Max started going out of his way to help Bradley uncover the awful nature of the boarding school.

Besides a past history of using hard drugs, Max’s other character flaw was in his relationship with women. In order to fill the void that drugs caused in his life, Max turned to flings and one-night-stands. It wasn’t a bad flaw but I did wish that it connected more to the overall story.

All-in-all Max was an easy character to root for especially with how he wanted to help the kids even if it meant risking his life. Max also had a good, clear character arc where he goes from being indifferent about the kids to caring about them.

ANGEL

Angel—Bradley’s social worker—was okay as a lead but I wished that her character had been expanded upon. Out of all the PoVs, Angel had the least of the four main protagonists and what was presented wasn’t exactly groundbreaking.

For example, one of the few facts the reader learns about Angel is besides being a social worker for Bradley, that Angel was also infertile. That wasn’t a bad detail but I had hoped that Angel would’ve wanted to adopt Bradley for more unique reasons such as wanting to help him control his powers by getting him out of the system.

To be fair, Angel did try to help with the murder case along with taking a more significant role in the last handful of chapters so the book did try and balance things out.

DETECTIVE BARNES

Detective Barnes was a decent-enough character but didn’t exactly bring anything new to the table. He was the classical trope of a bitter detective—with a dead family member—that goes rogue to figure out the case on his own (minus the alcoholism).

To be honest, I didn’t really have much to say on Detective Barnes. He did get a bit of depth involving a dream sequence with his father’s murder but besides the alien technology, it was nothing the reader hadn’t come across before. Like I said, it wasn’t bad it was just not too interesting.

THE WARDEN

As the Big Bad behind the “reform school” the Warden was a weak villain. Not only did he suddenly appear over halfway into the book, but he didn’t even do much after he was introduced. His plan of using Bradley as a weapon instantly backfired when the Warden went to monitor the school in-person.

Personally, I would have preferred the school principal as the Big Bad simply because she was present from the start which meant that more time could be used to establish her character. The Warden, on the other hand, did not have much of a personality besides isolating himself from the outside world and being evil. On another note, the pages dedicated to the Warden could be used to flesh out the main cast more and solve some of the confusing plot lines.

MAJOR SPOILER SECTION

After it was revealed that Bradley was Max’s son, the twist wasn’t too surprising. This was actually a good detail as it meant the foreshadowing did its job in allowing the pieces to click into place in a way that made sense and was satisfying. The biggest hint was that when Max’s girlfriend died, there was no mention of the funeral or Max seeing the body. Instead, the girlfriend was used in a government experiment to make Bradley’s superpowers.

The Warden’s death near the end just highlighted how pathetic of a villain he really was. Bradley essentially gives into his inner demon—who he has named Jeffery—and gets the other children at the school to riot and attack their teachers. The kids manage to steal all the teacher’s guns from their desks and then storm the gym that the Warden is in. After a brief attempt of trying to take control of the situation, the Warden is quickly overpowered by the child army and actually crucified with wooden beams. It was a gruesome death but also entertaining to read with such a heinous antagonist.

Finally, Bradley losing control to Jeffery would have been a tad better if it had been hinted at more. Before going through a portal into another dimension, Jeffery shed Bradley’s human skin and replaced it with scales as he fully took over Bradley’s mind. Before this, Jefferey could possess Bradley’s body and was in the mindscape but nothing to the degree of making Bradley mutate. It was a cool transition to the next book but needed more foreshadowing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. It was creative and the major characters were solid and the scenes involving drugs were pretty accurate. I do wish that some of the world building had gotten explained more and that some of the minor characters had gotten bigger roles. Despite my grievances however it was still a fine read.

I hope Jonah will keep improving his craft and wish him the best of luck on his writing journey!

[jamieson berry taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

wonderful

A brilliant story. Lots of twists and turns. The writing contained some grammar mistakes. There was also an over abundance of metaphors. This is a noble second book from a fledgling author. I look forward to more.