If it is true that evoking strong emotion in the reader means that a writer has done his or her work well, then Ms. Ross has done her work well with A Faded Lilly.

Unfortunately, in my case, the strong emotion is complete disgust.

I was not sure what category to put this book in. There is mystery in it, and suspense, and horror. Certainly, the title did nothing to prepare me for what was coming.

I am going to be upfront and admit that I did not read the whole book. I did try. I made it all the way through to page 70, and I just couldn't take it anymore.

As far as I can tell, the plot has to do with an attempt to acquire Lilly's grandmother's land and to revenge an attempted blackmail of a powerful man by Lilly's cousin Rachel. I would explain the plot better if I understood it better.

The book begins with a rape. It continues through a series of unpleasant violent encounters and accounts of sex and murder, including sex during murder. No character is trustworthy.

Our hero, Lilly, is supposed to be 19 and studying for law school, but she is so naive and lacking in common sense that one can not imagine how she made it out of high school.

Ms. Ross does have a certain facility when describing violence and twisted scenes I can not even bring myself to describe, but it is nearly impossible to follow the plot. People suddenly show up somewhere with no transition from where they were. The dialogue does not sound at all like the way real people talk. The story jumps from first person to third from page to page, and at times Lilly, as the narrator, tells you of things she could not possibly know, such as what another character did immediately after Lilly left the scene.

Maybe there are people with a taste for this kind of book, but I am not one of them. If you do decide to pick it up, be prepared for brutality, unlikeable characters, totally gratuitous scenes of nudity and near nudity, sex that is either violent or completely emotionless.