Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Devil House by John Darnielle

9 reviews

jessiejonesbentley's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Not horror but not bad. Decent writing. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Blood, Child abuse, Sexual content, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Violence

loveallthis's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Grief, Domestic abuse, Child death, Death, Blood, Body horror, Child abuse, Murder, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Alcoholism

Minor: Schizophrenia/Psychosis and Mass/school shootings

d3nim_diva's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder and Body horror

Moderate: Mental illness

zw_books's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Alcoholism, Child death, Death, Drug use, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Sexual content, Addiction, Body horror, Bullying, Mental illness, and Physical abuse

cviii's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Child death, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Vomit, Blood, Murder, Body horror, and Emotional abuse

Moderate: Alcohol, Child abuse, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Violence, Physical abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Homophobia

juliana18's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Murder

Moderate: Body horror and Domestic abuse

Minor: Sexual content

thesupermassive's review against another edition

adventurous inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Gore, and Body horror

Moderate: Physical abuse and Domestic abuse

wrensreadingroom's review against another edition

Incredibly dull and keeps jumping between 3 different stories

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Content Warnings

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Alcohol, Body horror, Bullying, Cursing, Murder, Vomit, Alcoholism, Blood, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Police brutality, and Violence

skudiklier's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.5

This book is about murder and a true crime author, to an extent, but it is more accurately about what happens when you tell a story that has real consequences for real people; it's about truth, and sensationalism, and voyeurism. It has horrifically graphic violence, which is not my thing at all, but I feel like it would be hard for any reader to come away from this book with an uncomplicated love for true crime.

Devil House is one of those books that's hard to really talk about without spoiling the ending. Every chapter complicates the story further, until the synopsis seems barely what the story is really about at all. It's made me think about the meaning of truth as some pure ideal, and about what the point of telling any story is. I'm a writer of poetry, not prose, but I think this book will still impact how I think about writing moving forward.

I don't like true crime, and if I didn't read everything John Darnielle writes, it's very likely I would never have been interested in this book. Some parts were indeed more gruesome than I would have liked, but overall I'm glad I read it.

It also is of course written well, in the same style as Darnielle's other novels. There's a lot of second-person narration, which I think works well in this context. I wrote down a lot of quotes that I really enjoyed (and the only reason I'm not sharing any is that this review is long enough already).

Mild spoilers ahead, in my central complaint of the book:

Update from a few months after I originally wrote this review: I took the below section out of my B&N review now that the book is out, because I think in the actual book this chapter may be less distracting. It has a different font to signal something weird is going on (which I didn't have in my eARC), and it does connect to things in the book of course, so I was just too caught up in how weird it was I guess. I'm leaving the below just in case, but feel free to ignore it.

Several chapters take place in different time periods, with different narrators and main characters, but nearly all of them are still obviously connected. However, there's one chapter in the middle that is about an entirely different thing, and written in a different style; it almost feels like a different book altogether. You could argue that there are minor things linking it to the rest of the text, but it still feels very odd. And to top it all off, that chapter ends in the middle of a sentence.

Because I was reading an ARC, I genuinely wondered if the chapter simply weren't finished, if no one noticed it wasn't complete before letting readers like me have access to the book. But near the end of the book, a character is reading the manuscript Chandler has for Devil House, and it ends in the middle of a sentence, confusing the reader. This led me to believe that perhaps this odd chapter in the middle of the book is actually meant to end that way, and the reader is supposed to be confused. 

I can appreciate this on a stylistic level, and in hindsight I can see how this chapter may relate to the rest of the book. I also have a lot of respect for John Darnielle, and am generally inclined to think any weird stuff he does is genius. But I have to say that that chapter may lose some readers (it's not short and there's no payoff), and may frustrate more. I look forward to reading interviews with Darnielle about this book, in the hopes that he might explain this decision in a way that justifies the negative aspects. 

(Again though, I'm still not 100% convinced it was intentional. Maybe it would feel different for a reader with a fully published copy.)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Stalking, Violence, Murder, Blood, Body horror, and Gore

Moderate: Sexual assault and Vomit

Minor: Pedophilia

I cannot overstate how graphic some of the descriptions of murder and gore are.