Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Mary: An Awakening of Terror

5⭐️

Trigger warnings ⚠️
Animal abuse
Dog murder
Murder
Mutilation
Blood

Mary is about to be 50, and strange things are happening to her. She is seeing things she shouldn't be seeing. Things that are disturbing. Everyone says it's "textbook " the change. Mary knows it's not. She knows she will have to return to her childhood home to learn the truth.

" I am just a story written in present tense. We all are. We are never finished. "

My Thoughts

This book is disgusting in all the best ways. Not gag me gross but disturbing and vile. The story seeped into my marrow like an infection.

What hit me the hardest was realizing the whole book takes place in the span of 13 days. April 9th - 20th. It feels like a lot longer. If you're not paying attention to the chapters' headings, you might think it was months, the way the darkness crawls around you.

Wicker Man vibes. Purge vibes. Possession and cult vibes. All the horror vibes I could possibly want wrapped up in one amazing book. Dark atmosphere cruelly contrasts the light that Mary desperately wishes she lived in.

Mary is so well written. It's not often a man can write a woman this well. Especially a woman in the throws of perimenopause. This author has! I could feel and relate to her pain and frustration. She was real in all the best and worst ways. Multidimensional and not glossed over in femal perfection, a lot of authors try to portray.

Not only did he write one female character with depth and realism, but he also wrote many. In all walks of life. Teenage angst to elderly stubbornness. The attributes of the fairer sex are not lost on him. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Content Warnings

kchen138's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense slow-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? Yes

5.0

Long but so worth it. Incredibly dark, gory, insightful, sensitive, witty, and relatable.

Content Warnings

richiebow141's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious reflective tense 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? Yes

4.75

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emory's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

Content Warnings

taytay92's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? No

4.5

4.5 stars

Huge, huge, huge amount of spoilers!!

First book of 2024 and OMG this was amazing. I loved it.

First thing I want to say: I love an unreliable narrator. Literally my favorite. When someone insane is telling a story, you know you're in for a treat.

Mary seemed to be a menopausal - sorry- perimenopausal (😂😂) woman who was a victim of a terrible situation with repressed childhood memories. Makes perfect sense with trauma! Her slow descent into the madness that always existed within her was done masterfully. Artfully. It happened both so slowly, but also at the perfect pace for the book. To see her full descent at the end was both hilarious (in a morbid way), and what I feel would be true to how it would actually play out IRL. She fully descended beyond her own register into a product outside of her control.

There was just so much that happened. Reincarnated serial killer? The brutal murder of her aunt? The dog?! The Resident Evil style FULL-TOWN cube-ing?!?! Being buried alive in the desert?? The driver's demise, Victor the ghost's "splat", I'll call it...The hilarious hallucinations and descriptions?? The Loved Ones in the desert sent me. SIR! PLEASE!

The author was genuinely hilarious. It was everything I could want in a horror book. My husband is reading this book after me and I left him so many notes on Kindle telling him how I was just cracking up at the absurdity of what was going on. Not that it was funny, but that she was just so delusional, having actually insane thoughts, misplaced thoughts, ill-timed thoughts (i.e. "the whole town was murdered, but I'm thinking of never wearing clothes again" or, "I'm literally buried in the desert but this is a good time to start singing"). Things like that were sprinkled consistently throughout that gave me vicarious glee to experience insanity that one hopes to never experience, yet is morbidly curious about...in a standoffish, spectator way.

That gives way to another aspect I enjoyed, which were the universal themes of aging and death. I liked the page at the end right before Bonnie was eviscerated, where Mary, in her fully insane self, talked on not being afraid of death, and how life goes on. How Bonnie had nothing to be afraid of. Even if she was bat-shit detached from what the common-folk would call reality, that much i would like to believe is true.

For gore - 8/10 on the gore scale, as in, the AMOUNT of gore in the book. 8/10 because there was a lot, and it was graphic. It was pretty intense at times, but done so well that it wasn't "gore for shock value". I hate when people insert the cringiest most vile/demented things they can think of, just to shock. This was believable for the circumstances, for what was happening. Tbh, I don't think I would enjoy anything over an 8, because I'm not sure how that much gore could be "enjoyable". I also don't like when horror books are low on the amount of gore, because that's just not real. I want raw and real. I want to see what is actually happening, in detail, to get the full immersion of the horror I agreed to partake in. When you read a horror book and it doesn't do that, I feel ripped off and underwhelmed. I don't want PG-13 when I pick up a horror!

He did say he was inspire by Carrie and although this was vastly different than Carrie, the skeleton was there. Instead of puberty, it was menopause in which her "powers" showed face. The past bullies, the revenge, but also - so much more.

I also appreciate how long this book took to make and materialize. He said he started it about 30 years before it was published. The sheer amount of time he spent thinking about it, just gives the book that much more meaning and depth.

Also, can we talk about the acknowledgement? "What is this asshole doing writing about menopause?". Gold. Because, you'd think a man really wouldn't have a place to understand what women go through. I don't say this lightly, but this make is woke. He gets it. He consulted with women, he watched and read books, did his research, and had people proofread and comment on his shortcomings if there were any. He did all the things and he did it well. He made sure he was informed. And to answer his question at the end, was all of that enough? Yes. Yes it was. Because without this story, it wouldn't have been told. Not in the way Nat Cassidy told it, surely not at all otherwise regardless. He gave a voice and power to a class of women who, he's right, are overlooked and who also deserve to be celebrated. He supported them, and to support is doing the right thing. Also, a man writing about it gives more power to them than a woman ever could, sadly. Unfortunately, men take men more seriously in this world. So, he's helping other men open their eyes to their shortcomings as well. As a woman, I really appreciate what he did and how he did it. From me, it was a 10/10 and couldn't have been done better. On that I say, he did a perfect job - no notes.

I guess we could have seen how she escaped the scene and got into a new apartment, and did she kill her parents as a child? But, then again, those things really aren't important or integral to the story and no one, including her repressed memories, would have been able to answer that. Which makes sense. As for her departure from the crime scene, that would have been a bit drab and we didn't need to see that. It was better to read the media's take and see the result: she ended up in an apartment aside the violent poltergeists, and was still crazy. She was uncaught and living her best life, a fresh start at the age of 50!

Content Warnings

brittanysreadingcorner's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot

5.0

AUDIOBOOK :5 stars for Mary: An Awakening of terror. Check trigger warnings before taking this ride. This book definitely takes serial unaliver to the next level. This is full of dark horror.
This book follows Mary who goes to her hometown to take care of her aunt (I think). Though Mary has had some concerns of her mental state she goes to make some money. So many events take place to lead up to the best plot twist! While reading this I even found myself laughing at some parts. The audiobook was greatly executed!

Content Warnings

sonygaystation's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Holy motherfucking shit. This book hit exactly right in all the places it wanted to hit. I was NOT expecting a cis man to be able to do this kind of exploration of female rage and gender but holy shit. I’m in love with this book. I had so much fun through all the nasty humans and gore, and I LOVED Mary and her aunt even though her aunt is the absolute worst human and Mary herself needs some work. But damn y’all Nat Cassidy did the thing because despite being 20 years younger than the MC, I related so much to her. Also it just makes my year when I can find genuine horror that’s not only good but ACTUALLY has in depth commentary and metaphors and doesn’t lazily rely on mental illness and its bastardization. I loved this to pieces. Seriously. I’m about to tell everyone I know to pick this up, Listen to this via audiobook cuz omg Susan Bennett does not hold back!!!!!

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