The Dollhouse Asylum

by Mary Gray

[Angie]

I have seriously no idea what to make of The Dollhouse Asylum. The description made it sound super interesting, unique, and dangerous! Well, it was interesting in the beginning because I had no clue what was going on, and I was compelled to keep reading. But by the end, nothing makes a lick of sense, and I'm more confused than when I started.

The Dollhouse Asylum started off pretty good. Cheyenne wakes up and has no clue where she is. She remembers someone putting a chloroform soaked cloth over her face on her way from the bathroom, but that's it. Then she recognizes a voice. It's Teo, her math teacher whom she's been having a relationship with. Apparently he's brought her to some subdivision that he created in order to escape from the second wave of "Living Rot" which is a disease that turns people into zombies. Cheyenne is grateful to be out of harms way, and excited to finally be with the man she loves in the open. But soon enough she realizes that there's something off about this neighborhood, and something even more off about Teo.

While I loved this premise, The Dollhouse Asylum makes zero sense and there are zero answers by the end. Teo is obsessed with literature, so he renames everyone he brought to his paradise after tragic love stories. He's also fascinated by the number seven, so only seven couples are allowed to live there. But bringing Cheyenne in makes eight, so someone has to die. Teo is clearly sick in the head, but that's all we really know about him. He's kidnapped a bunch of teens, including his brother, and has no problem killing them off. He's dating a student and is manipulating her to fit into his fantasy world, while zombies bring chaos on the outside world. That's it though. I really do not understand why he needed this little neighborhood, and why he bothered bringing random students if he was just going to kill them off so he could be with Cheyenne. I really don't, and we never learn anything about his motivation. We do learn how he got the funding, but that's not really important in the grand scheme of things.

The Dollhouse Asylum was a great idea, but it simply didn't work. I can't just accept "he's crazy" as an excuse for all of this weirdness. Obviously Teo is, but something had to prompt him to do this, and I don't believe it was his obsessive love for Cheyenne or their shared love of literature. Not even the zombie apocalypse explains why this seven by seven neighborhood was necessary, especially since there's a twist involving that which I figured out early on. It's a mess of plot holes.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.