Evil - Jack Ketchum

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS, SO IF YOU PLAN TO READ THE BOOK, SCROLL PAST THIS POST OR CLOSE THE BLOG.
Stephen King gives away most of the book in the preface, though. 

Did you ever cry for an hour while reading a book? No?
Well, after Evil by Jack Ketchum, you can honestly say that you have. Depending of how fast or slow you read, it'll last even longer and you'll be on the verge of throwing this book away, curling up into a ball and sobbing helplessly.

It starts with a man, David, telling us about his two ex-wives and how each one of them thought they know real pain. Then the story jumps back to David's youth, when he was about 12 years old. He has a great time with his friends, Ruth Chandler, the mum of three boys, Ralphie (who is only called Woofer because he can imitate dogs so well), Willie and Donny, who was David's best friend at that time.
Then Meg and Susan, Ruth's nieces are left in her hands after the parents of the sisters die in a car accident. David describes Meg as the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, more beautiful than all the other girls in his street. The story progresses as it tells us about carnival, the games the kids play, in particular The Game. It is a bit strange, as the person that is the Commander always loses and gets tortured by the Soldiers.
Ruth seems to grow stranger throughout the book, and then she starts to abuse Meg. Meg tries to stay strong and endure the pain, hoping for Ruth to realize what she is actually doing to her, but she doesn't. In fact, she invites her sons and other kids from the neighbourhood to watch her torturing Meg. The kids don't ever tell anybody, no, they even start enjoying watching her wimper in pain and cry.
David, our main character, is torn between the horror he watches there so often and the pleasure he derives from seeing her standing naked. We witness Ruth becoming insane, often not caring about what the kids are doing to Ruth. They force her to eat her own excrements, pee on her face and stick a Coca Cola bottle into her vagina, although Ruth catches them doing the latter and gets extremely angry.
David then plans to help Meg escape, and thinks she made it afterwards. It turns out that Ruth heard her while she tried to rescue her sister as well, and when David comes back into the house after days of anxiety and restlessness, he sees Donny raping Meg while Ruth, Willie and Woofer watch them.
They burn I FUCK FUCK ME into her stomach with hot needles and Ruth then cauterises her clitoris with an iron, saying that she is a slut and that girls are worth nothing, having the curse of Eva and her vagina.
David tries to escape because he can't bear watching and hearing her enduring that pain, but Ruth's three kids chase him and drag him back to the cellar into which he then gets locked with Meg and her sister susan.
He attempts to escape once, but in the following fight, Ruth knocks Meg's head against the wall and she dies in the night because of her wounds, but not before telling David to bring her the ring of her mother that Ruth took away from her as a sign of mockery.
A few days after Meg's death, David hears somebody knocking on the door, and it is finally the end of the whole thing. Ruth starts telling the police officer that Meg did all the things on her own, proud of being a slut and having sex with all the boys in the neighbourhood. David then sees the ring on her finger and decides to fight back, pushing Ruth off the stairs to the cellar. She snaps her neck, shits herself and dies. Even though the police officer has seen that it was clearly David's fault, he says that David must've probably tripped and accidentally knocked her over. David then demands the ring being given to Susan.
Then we are brought back to the present-time David, talking about still having the guilt of not helping Meg when he could inside him. He tells us what has happened to the other kids, most of them having died because of their lifestyle, Woofer having become a rapist murderer and not knowing where any of them are, and even though he has nightmares of his past and is wondering what has happened to his friends, and most importantly, himself.

Whew, that was a long summary, but the book deserved nothing less, because it has really touched me. Now I've found out that it was inspired by something that really happened and that it was only slightly altered, I'm feeling a bit disappointed in men, but I won't torture you with that thought because it has bothered me for quite a long time now.
Here is a link to the Wiki page of the real crime that happened in 1965, let me tell you, it's shocking, but that is life.
Silvia Likens Murder