Playground Child of Divorce

Review
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Playground – Child of Divorce by Aron Beauregard

Alright. Trigger warnings? Where do you even start with Aron Beauregard. Pick a bodily function, a crime, or a moral boundary—he probably stomped on it, set it on fire, and laughed while doing it. Murder, child murder, kidnapping, grotesque sexual nonsense, death in all its worst outfits. Basically a checklist of things most sane people would actively run from.

So if you’re sane: stop here.
If you’re one of the emotionally damaged gremlins among us with an iron stomach and poor life choices: welcome back.

This book came out after Playground, but it’s actually a prequel—and from page one it drags you headfirst into the dark without so much as a courtesy shove. No warm-up. No easing in. Just boom, Aron doing what Aron does best: making you uncomfortable in ways that feel almost personal. And yes, even when you think you know what to expect, he still finds new ways to shock you. That fact alone worries me. Deeply.

Now—honesty hour. I’m still not a fan of the sexual stuff. It’s gross, it’s unnecessary (to me), and it always makes me squint at the page like, sir, was this really needed? But I know some readers eat that up, so consider that a “me problem,” not a book problem.

What did work incredibly well was the deeper dive into Geraldine, Rock, and the unhinged Nazi scientist. Their dynamic is twisted, pathetic, horrifying—and disturbingly human. They just want to please her. And that’s somehow worse than outright evil.

A few lines punched me straight in the chest and stayed there:

“He was so starved for kindness, just a simple word of encouragement would’ve been the equivalent of a dope fiend getting a fix.”

“She’d always kept him subdued with negativity and feelings of irrelevance.”

“Maybe for one night she’ll see me as her son… or love me in a way that’s not so sick.”

That’s the core of this book right there. The victims this time are children of divorce—kids who slip through the cracks, unseen, unheard, emotionally abandoned. Easy to take. Or so the adults think. Because these kids are stronger than they look, even when they’re broken. Especially then.

No spoilers—but watching mentally and physically abused kids try to survive one of the most horrifying, sadistic “games” imaginable is not a fun ride. It’s tense. It’s brutal. It’s bleak as hell. And somehow, you keep turning the pages.

So yeah. Four bloody, screamy stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
It pulled me in hard—but it didn’t completely obliterate me the way Playground did.

Final warning (again, because apparently people don’t listen):
This book is for the damaged, the dark-minded, the emotionally twisted, the readers with stomachs made of iron.
If you believe in fairies, rainbows, emotional safety, or if too much caffeine already upsets your stomach—turn around. This is not your playground.