Book Review: In This Way I was Saved

I am the type of person who enjoys books of a psychological nature. The human mind is one of the most familiar yet most mysterious aspects of humanity, capable of surprising us even after we believe we have seen it all. When someone recommended In This Way I was Saved to me by saying that it was a great psychological story, I decided to give it a shot and I was not disappointed.

In This Way I was Saved is a book published in 2009, the first ever novel by Brian DeLeeuw. The story is told from the point of view of a boy named Daniel and his friendship and relationship with another boy named Luke. Luke himself is a seemingly normal child, but his personal life is plagued with many problems, particularly his psychologically disturbed mother. Luke’s friendship with Daniel is one of the only things he can enjoy when he needs to take refuge from the harshness of the real world; however, as the two grow older, Luke finds himself depending less and less on Daniel. Daniel doesn’t like this at all and soon begins to take some rather sinister actions to ensure that Luke’s life remains under his complete control.

The atmosphere of this book is a very oppressive one and is very fitting for this particular story. The narrative takes great care to paint Luke as a boy whose personal life has made it very hard for him to form relationships with other people. His mother being insane and his father reluctant to interact with him only strengthen Daniel’s hold on Luke since Daniel was the only one to ever lend Luke any attention and support. When other people try to reach out to Luke, his interactions become all the more awkward because he doesn’t know how to properly interact with others, further cementing him as the ‘strange one’ to other people and allowing Daniel to keep a hold on Luke’s life. The author also does a good job when describing the less-than-sane actions of Luke’s mother; the readers will definitely feel sorry for Luke whenever his mother suffers an ‘episode’ and it also helps establish that Luke’s home is not a place he can feel safe in. 

Daniel himself is a very interesting figure to read about. Despite the story being written from his point of view, the reader really doesn’t know much about Daniel. Daniel’s narrative voice is almost mechanical for the majority of the novel, usually a matter-of-factly reciting of the events of Luke’s life. When Daniel uses this tone when observing the people around Luke, he comes across as quite dispassionate and establishes his lack of empathy; when readers see him using this almost mechanical tone when trying to drive Luke to do reprehensible things for the sake of maintaining his control over Luke’s life, he comes across as very chilling. As villain protagonists go, Daniel is an incredibly effective one and certain revelations about his true nature will cause the story to take quite a dark turn when taking said revelations into account upon reviewing events in the narrative.

The revelation of Daniel’s true nature, however, does come quite quickly, especially for observant readers. This revelation might’ve been stronger if it was revealed near the end, as this would give readers a lot more story events to review under a new light. Still, the fact that the reveal itself is never completely spelled out will most likely give readers a nice ‘Eureka!” moment and does its job of making the whole narrative seem even more psychologically oppressive. As a first novel, this is a fine piece of work and it is one that I would definitely recommend to those who enjoy psychological stories.