Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - How to murder your Boss – McMasters Handbuch zum Morden

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

How to murder your Boss – McMasters Handbuch zum Morden by Rupert Holmes

35 reviews

nyx_pages's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous dark funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

This was a fun read! Dark humor, murder plots, and fairly satisfying ends.

Content Warnings

bleu_writes's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark funny lighthearted tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Easily one of my favorite reads this year. I love the tone and found all of the twists to be fair and enjoyable.
It scratches a very petty, not-super-christian itch in my brain.

Content Warnings

helmililja's review against another edition

1.0

slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Tl;dr great concept, awful execution

Where do I even start with this... I bought this book because it was on sale, the cover caught my eye, and the plot description on the back sounded awesome. Who wouldn't want to read about a murder academy? However, the issues were very quickly apparently.

Firstly, the pacing is AWFUL. I get that there are 3 main characters and they all need to be set up but god this was a slog at times. It took ages to get going and even when it did get going it was still unbelievably slow.

Secondly, I'm not one to usually complain about ridiculous things in fictional media but my god were the murder plans the main characters came up with ridiculous.

like, cliff is playing some fucking 6d chess with the whole "oh no you ruined my plan... actually I planned for this and you're dead now muahahaha

IT'S SO STUPID I JUST CAN'T TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY

Speaking of murder

Gemma being spared because she didn't want to kill a pregnant woman is so STUPID. Why is a murder academy pro life. At first I thought Gemma actually died from the impact of the bricks and I would've preferred that to what actually ended up happening

And um

there's exactly zero conflict in this book?? IT'S SO BORING NOTHING EVER GOES WRONG. Psychopathic classmate at murder school? The faculty just execute him for being a danger. Cliff falls into a fucking reviene? Oh actually it was fake and had a cushioned bottom :) Gemma fails at her graduation murder and is thus going to get killed? Well actually no✨

AND DORIAN let me not even get started. I'd like to personally ask the writer of this book why the actual fuck it was implied that she was better off with her rapist misogynist boss. THAT MAN LITERALLY CONFESSED TO ASSAULTING WOMEN and yet she's even more miserable once he dies?? Go fuck yourself.

Yeah idk it's so sad because this premise has potential, this writer just did not unlock it. There were some parts I genuinely enjoyed a lot but the ending was just so shit I can't.

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crystalyssa's review against another edition

2.0

adventurous challenging dark lighthearted mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I'd give it one star, but by the time I wanted to DNF it, I was already halfway through the book and decided to begrudgingly commit to finishing the rest of it. ("But there's a half/quarter star rating feature!" don't piss me off more than this book already has. Let me make life simple for myself.)

I'll start this off kindly: I wanted to read this book because the cover is gorgeous and I found the morbid title entertaining. The premise of failed/aspiring ~~murderers~~ "deletionists" attending a homicide school is fascinating in a gothic, almost comical way. It's an interesting and refreshing story idea that I've personally never seen done. Also, the world-building and mapping of the McMasters college itself is very cool! Every location is described just enough to both instill the intended and evoke a personal description of what everything looks like, which is perfect for someone like me.

However, as many other reviewers have mentioned, there were problems--which were in a grand MAJORITY of the book--that instilled a fury that I myself cannot even begin to fathom.

It's very obvious that Rupert Holmes as a bit of an ego complex, in which he inflates and translates to every, single male character introduced throughout the narration. Dean Harrow. Cliff Iverson. Merrill Fiedler. Simeon Sampson. Jud Helkampf. These are like the first examples I can come up with from the top of my head, but this urge to find Holmes and strangle him was deeply ingrained in me, because why does every single male character have the exact same douchebag attitude? Like, I get it, the time period in this is set post-WW2 when sexism was much bigger than it is now, but Holmes can take the stick shoved up his tush and beat himself with it because he does not do characterization well AT ALL.

I'm almost inclined to say that he (somehow) wrote the women better, but the other two POVs--both of which were women--were insufferable in their own "special" ways. Doria Maye has an incredibly sexualized personality and character: despite her being the most tolerable POV between her, Cliff, and Gemma, I was still eyerolling at her evidently "I am a woman who is sexy, promiscuous, and will use that to manipulate men" trope. Very sexist character trope. Gemma Lindley, on the other hand, was almost written to be as important as diet water, which is to say that Holmes evidently did not have enough going on in the plot (sarcasm) and decided that Cliff needed a romantic love interest or, as my manager called it, a "side-quest." HE DOES NOT NEED THIS SIDE-QUEST. HIS PREVIOUS LOVE INTEREST COMMITTED KYS AND DOES NOT NEED TO HAVE GOOGLY EYES OVER A GIRL HE JUST MET AT THIS HOMICIDE SCHOOL THAT EVIDENTLY HAS NO INTEREST IN HIM IN THE SLIGHTEST! Speaking of which, there is genuinely no hint of Gemma returning his feelings at all until her point of view a third into the book, and her returned feelings during that exam felt cringily forced. And then at the end:

"Cliff! You're alive! :D" "Gemma! You're not dead let's go out on a date! ;D"

THE STICK, HOLMES. USE THE STICK.

And, oh my god, for all the living things in the world, this book literally treats us like we're stupid. Of course, it doesn't help that the narrator is Dean Harbinger Harrow, one of the most insufferable characters of the book who tries to be morbidly funny and fails to. Every. Thing. Is. Explained. Over. And. Over. Again. Then it's explained IN ELABORATE DETAIL A SECOND TIME when something is just "so clever." Holmes (Holmes...), I hope both sides of your pillow and your bed is a little too warm for comfort every night.

And, of course, the cherry on top...

"...We are not going to help someone commit murder."

(pg. 260, Chapter XXXVI)

...in a book about murder.

I almost threw this library-owned copy out of the car when I was on the highway. Look, I love ironic statements where it's a character going "It surely can't be that bad." with the starting quote of the next scene being something along the lines of "It was that bad." I love irony. I love humor. I love everything about these when it's properly executed. Note how I say "properly" before executed. This also ties back to my point about the "Holmes's main character syndrome" I was on about. This is a high-ho, smart-alec CEO saying this line, sure. Would it have made me laugh in any other circumstance? Absolutely. But after the rest of the rancid vibes I had to face from pages past, I unironically found myself considering murder. Best find you your Sherlock, Holmes. Whatever contaminated that stick up "there," eat it. Probably tastes better than what you dished for us.

All in all, let me summarize this in the best way I can: I was ranting to my manager about how bad this book was while I was reading it. Am I going to be murdering my employer anytime soon? If I was, then not anymore. That's how bad the book was. It couldn't even manager to make murder cool in a book about cool, "good" murder.

I think I'll find myself a good stick and hunt down Holmes myself...

Content Warnings