Reviews tagging 'Racism'

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

9 reviews

valjeanval'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? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Beukes is a great writer and thorough researcher who created a cast of interesting, powerful, complicated women throughout time. It just sucks that most of them are murder victims. I think I understand conceptually her desire to give voice and depth to the as she calls them “pretty corpses” of crime thrillers, and she does that, but the genre itself is still limiting. The murderer is misogyny person, literally killing women who would otherwise change the world. It’s a solid metaphor, but a frustrating read.

Also, while the time travel element is cool, the paradoxes always hurt my brain a bit. The writing was good enough that my suspension of disbelief was only strained rather than snapping.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Death of parent, Gore, Misogyny, Medical trauma, Torture, Violence, Kidnapping, Sexual violence, Animal cruelty, Death, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Stalking

Moderate: Addiction, Alcohol, Antisemitism, Cursing, Drug use, Gun violence, Homophobia, Outing, and Suicide

Minor: Racism, Transphobia, Sexism, Abortion, and Gun violence

sophiemlpink's review against another edition

This has a fantastic premise with terrible execution. The pieces are there, the author just forgot to assemble them in any semblance of order. The murders are torture porn and the obvious metaphor for patriarchal society corroding intelligent women’s potential for changing the world just isn’t there. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Death, Torture, Violence, Murder, Gore, Sexism, and Misogyny

Moderate: Homophobia and Racism

marae216's review against another edition

Loved the concept, hated the execution. 
Excessive and highly graphic murder details were unnecessary to the plot. 
Relationship between the 40 year old boss and his intern was icky. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Medical content, and Murder

hillbilly_heroine's review

dark sad tense slow-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? No

1.5

The proportions of this book are all wrong. It’s 75% graphic descriptions of brutal murder from the POV of a serial killer and 25% everything else: plot and character development, how the mystery is solved, everything. You get more insight into the mind of the serial killer than the other main characters, and in theory that would be interesting but there’s a reason there’s a well-known profile of serial killers: they’re all kind of similar. He’s not an interesting guy, he’s just horrible, and we follow his POV for most of the book. 

Also, the first Malcolm chapter is the whitest white lady author writing that ever existed. It is shoot-me-directly-into-the-sun cringe that reads like the author has never met or spoken to a Black person. I see on the back of the book that she’s an American living in South Africa. I have questions. 

If you like thrillers, you won’t like this because the pace is actually slowed down because of how much time we spend murdering characters we don’t know and haven’t met. If you like time travel, you probably also won’t like this because it’s just a random plot device. If you like detailed descriptions of murdered women from the POV of a serial killer, and you wish books had significantly more of this, I guess this is for you? I honestly don’t know who this is for.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Blood, and Animal death

Moderate: Racism, Transphobia, and Dysphoria

arthur_ant18's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Stalking, Animal death, Death, Murder, and Sexual violence

Moderate: Racism, Transphobia, and Drug abuse

Minor: Abortion and Homophobia

aquariusvintage's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious 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? It's complicated

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Violence, Gore, Homophobia, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Vomit, and Xenophobia

charsometimes's review

dark mysterious sad medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Gore, Stalking, Blood, Murder, and Death

Moderate: Racism and Transphobia

purecomedy's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Misogyny, Murder, Sexism, Stalking, and Violence

Moderate: Medical content, Racism, and Transphobia

Minor: Abortion and Drug abuse

sarah984's review

dark tense slow-paced

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

2.0

I thought this was an intriguing premise for a book, a time-travelling killer and a magical house, but the final product disappointed me. We spend WAY too much time in the killer’s head and he's extremely boring if you're not into reading the same rant about how he hates women 400 times. The romance with Kirby and her supervisor is stupid and never really amounts to anything

(and in the end she STILL needs a man to save her!)

and the explanation for the magic behind the house’s time travel abilities is the absolute most boring one you could pick. The "blaccent" on a few of the Chicago characters is borderline racist parody. The other shining girls are all really interesting but when you finally get invested in them they die horribly so it feels a bit pointless. For some reason I thought this was going to be about Kirby trying to save the others, but it isn't.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Death, Gore, Medical content, Misogyny, and Torture

Moderate: Drug abuse, Racism, Sexual content, and Gun violence

Minor: Ableism, Antisemitism, Deadnaming, Dementia, Excrement, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Miscarriage, Racial slurs, Self harm, Transphobia, and Vomit