Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

It by Stephen King

79 reviews

stuffo's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Bullying, Cancer, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Domestic abuse, Fatphobia, Genocide, Murder, Sexism, Slavery, Suicide, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Animal cruelty, Blood, Child abuse, Death of parent, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Drug use, Kidnapping, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Vomit, Alcohol, Animal death, Child death, Cursing, Death, and War

bluejeepbaby's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Child death, Homophobia, Murder, Suicide, Violence, Body horror, Gore, Racism, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, and Self harm

Moderate: Fatphobia, Child abuse, Alcoholism, Infertility, Body shaming, Gaslighting, Alcohol, Toxic relationship, Islamophobia, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, and Sexual violence

Minor: Animal death, Gun violence, Excrement, Animal cruelty, Vomit, and Antisemitism

laurelaurel's review against another edition

adventurous slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Sure it had good moments and great quotes but it just genuinely wasn’t worth it. It was SO LONG and I feel like I got nothing out of it. I was just kinda reading it to get it over with not because I actually enjoyed it and I kept thinking it would get better but it didn’t. Also Stephen King is so weird and I hate him what is wrong with him. Also I just kept thinking “what was this guy on when writing this, he needs a new editor.” He must’ve been on so many drugs while writing this and it did not help him 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Grief, Sexual content, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Body horror, Racial slurs, and Suicide

Moderate: Animal death, Stalking, Abandonment, Animal cruelty, and Sexism

hanreadin's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No

1.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Cursing, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Blood, Child abuse, Child death, Fatphobia, Medical content, Murder, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Hate crime, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Antisemitism, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, and Death

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Mental illness, and Incest

Minor: Vomit

jakobmarleymommy's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Death, Excrement, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Blood, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Body horror, Murder, Racial slurs, and Violence

jackbifrost's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Bullying, Child death, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Animal death, Fatphobia, Gore, Body horror, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Death, Grief, Hate crime, Suicide, Violence, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Animal cruelty, Blood, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Terminal illness, Confinement, Gun violence, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Panic attacks/disorders, Death of parent, Mental illness, Sexual violence, Excrement, Forced institutionalization, Stalking, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Minor: Classism, Toxic friendship, and Vomit

sidekicksam's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

The King among horror books - IT is a 1376 page long novel about the Losers Club's two-time stand-off with IT, otherwise known as Pennywise the Clown, or Robert Gray.

Wow. This book was exactly the wild ride I imagined it would be. It is scary. It is fucked up. It is funny. It is timeless.

This story surprised me in so many ways, but let me just try to summarize why I love this book (more precisely, King's writing):

1. The world building is superb. King does such a good job visualising the world of Derry as it was in '58 and '85, introducing side characters and backstories to all of them, without making the reader forget the red line of the story, it feels like you've lived the story yourself. And though living through the Age of Pennywise would be awful, reading this story is a delight.

2. The characters are so well-thought out, and not a single one of them is uninteresting to read about. Ben, Richie, Bill, Eddie, Mike, Stan, Beverly, Pennywise/IT - you get to know every one of them so intimately, you almost feel like the 8th member of the Losers Club.

3. The story itself! Man, this story is mad crazy brilliant. To fuck up generations of adults into being terrified of clowns because everyone knows this story is insane. But it wouldn't have happened if the story wasn't so insanely awesome. 

Ok, so I can conclude by saying that I appreciated the book a lot. HOWEVER. It is not my favourite King. I can't exactly put my finger on what it was (maybe it was THAT scene that ruined it for me), but 11.22.63 and The Stand both resonated with me more (though the ending of The Stand is way inferior to IT). 

But if you're looking for a challenge that will be so rewarding you'll want to send me a thank-you note, or if you're looking for the ultimate Spooky Season read, IT is it. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Suicide, Sexual harassment, Death of parent, Addiction, Gore, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Domestic abuse, Death, Child death, Blood, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Infertility, Infidelity, Gun violence, Abandonment, Sexual content, Racism, Racial slurs, Physical abuse, Murder, Mental illness, Cursing, Child abuse, Bullying, Body shaming, Violence, Self harm, Emotional abuse, and Drug abuse

klor's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

An absolutely dense story filled with rich character studies, friendships, and the horrors of a small town in New England. There are a lot of things I loved here: the tenderness of the Losers' friendship, the nostalgic callbacks to their summer in their childhood, how IT could also be an allegory for how ambivalent a small town is, the Derry Interludes and Mike's voice and stories that gives the world they live in a very rich context, the genuine scares I got reading some parts of the book

from the built up of Stan's suicide and the very human violence of Tom and Henry to the claustrophobia in the sewers

, I'm glad we also got to explore everyone's backstories and their motivations even if sometimes, as a reader, you know the choices they make aren't the best. There were also a few problems like how the women in this book on how it deals with excess whether it's the racism or misogyny in order to drive the point home. The near end also felt a little unfocused as if King didn't know how to end the novel but the actual endings tied things up well and gave readers a hopeful look on the Losers' futures. I do love the book format a lot and hope the adaptions follow the back and forth more ala Little Women (2019) rather than splitting it up in two parts. The childhood nostalgia and trauma hits more within the context and really tells a story less about freaky clowns and more about children trying to navigate their early years with all this tragedies (big or small or personal) around them and how their experiences manifested even further in their adulthood, and vice versa.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Fatphobia, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Murder, Racial slurs, Sexual violence, Suicide, Racism, and Violence

cinderrunner's review against another edition

adventurous dark sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

Please excuse any typing errors as I am too lazy to edit
There are some good things about this book, but the bad significantly outweigh them. This is one of the most needlessly offensive and problematic books i have ever read. The only thing horrifying about this novel is that King had the audacity to include so much needless hatred and is still being praised for it. The level of racism, sexism, pedophilia/sexualization of minors, anti semitisim, etc is FAR beyond anything that is warranted by the plot and its honestly inexcusable. If you took a shot everytime King used the N word with a hard R, you'd die of alcohol poisoning somewhere between the one third and halfway mark. King is constantly using language and scenarios that sexualize Beverly, constantly mentioning the way her 12 year old body is maturing, painting her as a (and im quoting here) "whore" from almost every chatacters POV. Shes even sexualized in her own POVs.

Bill's catatonic wife is literally likened to a blow up doll at a sex store

Richie is known for doing voices and almost all of them are racist stereotypes, his go to one being the charactature of a black child like you'd see in a minstrel show. They are constantly using Stan being jewish as a punchline. It feels intentional that

the jewish character is the one he kills before they even get together as adults

, the female is the one who spends her whole life abused, and

the black character is the one King cast to stay in Derry and remain poor while the others prosper as adults

. And this isnt even the big shit like the ENTIRE CHILD SEX SCENE. With literal 11 to 12 year olds. Which King has never retracted or apologized for (from what I've seen) but only said it aged poorly cause people now are more sensitive....like its irrational to take offense to an adult writing kids having a, for lack of a better term, gang bang. And again, most of this is completely irrelevant to the plot and could have been excluded with zero detriment to the story. I will admit that if you are writing about minorities and setting it in the 50s, a certain level of bigotry is warranted. But the level to which King took it is gross and uncalled for. He could have just as easily NOT written any minority characters if this is his idea of representation. The fact that he, of his own freewill, wrote this level of offensive stereotypes, micro aggressions, bigotry and full on volatil hate and has never apologized for it, or made a statement against it, is sick. And the fact that it got through editing and publishing and is STILL being praised and rated 5 stars speaks volumes to what we are willing to let straight, cis, white men in power get away with. I can't imagine a single POC, female, or religious minority character writing the story the way King did, even in the 80s.
It is also overlong, it could have easily been 400 pages shorter than it was. It dragged on and on. It doesnt genuinely pick up or reach a true climax til around page 950 (in my edition) so like 150 pages away from the end. That's ridiculous. King is constantly overloading the book with lore building and exposition that really isnt needed past a certain point. It took me 4 months of on and off reading to finally get through this thing. Ive never taken more than a month to read a book, even dense ones like the entire Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series, in my adult life. 
Most people I have seen, even those who praise this book, don't count this as a book they would ever reread. If that's not a red flag i don't know what is. I cant think of a single book, even thick and complex ones, that i loved and wouldn't pick up again. 
PROS: King is a genuinely skilled writer on a technical level and the book is well crafted. There are very thoughtful and interesting themes around childhood vs adulthood, the transition between the two, and the power of faith/belief. It really could have been a gorgeous novel if he leaned more into that earlier in the book and cut down on all the unnecessary bigotry and lore building. I likely would have loved this if it was shorter and less hate filled. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Murder, Pregnancy, Racism, Blood, Body horror, Body shaming, Child abuse, Classism, Physical abuse, Rape, Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Confinement, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Miscarriage, Racial slurs, Self harm, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Bullying, Cancer, Cannibalism, Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexism, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Child death, Pedophilia, Toxic friendship, Cursing, Death, Hate crime, Incest, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Vomit, Alcohol, Ableism, Addiction, Animal cruelty, Fatphobia, Gore, Sexual violence, Adult/minor relationship, Antisemitism, Excrement, Religious bigotry, and Sexual harassment

The whole book is a trigger warning. It is full of violence, GRAPHIC bigotry, and the sexualization of women and especially minors.

averagesparrow's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Very strong start, very interesting characters and themes. Gets a bit muddled towards the end. Could have used another pass of revisions, as there are a few inconsistencies (e.g. Bev’s father is once referred to as her stepfather).

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Fire/Fire injury, Religious bigotry, Classism, Body shaming, Alcoholism, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Antisemitism, Misogyny, Racism, Racial slurs, Child abuse, Sexual content, Excrement, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Hate crime, Fatphobia, Physical abuse, Death, Suicide, Homophobia, Bullying, Emotional abuse, and Child death