The Taker by Alma Katsu: Love Sickness

Love can be a beautiful, amazing, tangible thing that makes you whole to the point of being better for it. On the other hand, it can also eat you alive, whittling away at the good in you until there is nothing left but deceit and ruthlessness.

Most people would say love is only the good, but is that true? What about unrequited love? Love that is not returned can make a person commit desperate acts, things they would have never thought themselves possible of achieving if not for the emotion that was consuming them.

Lanore, our main character and point of view in Alma Katsu's The Taker, is so innocent and naive, the daughter of faithful man and women, living in a pious little town in 19th century rural Maine where sins are not forgiven, are not seen as mistakes, but as gossip and a reason to be shunned. She has this deep reasoning within her that she is different and deserves to get what she wants, no matter the price.

Only 100 pages in, and Lanore is already a completely different person than I met. Either that, or she just hides her faults very well beneath her innocent exterior. Johnathan is her vice, and her love for him is total and overwhelming. She would do anything for him, even commit murder (or what she views as murder) to "save him," when really her actions are a means to her own end. He steals her innocence in more ways than one, although he is ignorant of his thievery. Only Lanore knows. She isn't unaware of her transformation; in fact, she recognizes it and almost embraces her new self, even though she knows she's wrong. 

I don't know yet whether this love brought out the truth in Lanore or if Johnathan's unrequited feelings have reduced her to being on the verge of immoral. I think maybe she is just hungry, desperate to fit in somewhere, and she has always believed Johnathan to be her true home. 


My question at this point in reading: Is this love that Lanore feels, or is it an illusion that is making her sick? 




Happy Reading Everyone :)




~ Keely ~