Reviews tagging 'Rape'

Bluebeard's Castle by Anna Biller

23 reviews

s_armstrong's review

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dark sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.25

good god what was that

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brettashleyyy's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

….Manderfield? Really?
This did not work. At all. Should’ve stayed as a screenplay. It read like bad fanfiction and made my eyeballs hurt from how much I was rolling them. The FMC sucks.  The constant references to its source material was beating me over the head to a bloody pulp. The overexplaining/telling not showing of basic feminist concepts, overuse of blatantly bland similes, and the overuse of the word “lugubrious” reeks of amateur writing. I could tell Anna Biller wanted to capture the melodrama and camp of the giallo, Hitchcock, pulp fiction of the 60s/70s wrapped in this not-at-all feminist retelling of the classic fairytale. The thing is, trying to capture that essence on the page is not possible, and trying to make a pastiche of someone as iconic as Hitchcock was going to inevitably be a failure. Even Pitbull knew that. I’ve never tried to power through an audiobook so quickly in my life for the sheer joy of being done with this book.

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blondefairy's review

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dark emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25


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peterse1's review against another edition

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

4.25


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ahappyhallowqueen's review

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dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0


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beccaand's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25


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whatiamactuallyreading's review

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

2.5

I’ve never had an original experience 

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eena's review

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dark emotional mysterious 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? Yes

2.5

“Where is the wife’s side of the story in these novels? We only have the husband’s side. The husband who wishes to discard an inconvenient wife.”

This book was truly engaging and it was genuinely a good modern gothic “romance/horror” type of novel but I have to give it a 2.5/5 stars. I read this because I watched The Love Witch couple of months back and saw that Anna Biller also wrote a book, I liked the first part the most and found myself kind of getting tired towards the end. 

Part of me also felt like it was a great decision to have a third person pov because you will be able to study yourself too and how you react with everything that’s happening. But yeah, the writing wasn’t phenomenal but I’m glad that I still read and finished it, it could have been better but it’s okay. 


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layvender's review

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

3.5

i'm a big fan of biller's films and really admire her voice as a creator. i loved the concept of this novel - a gothic story that acknowledges the genre itself in a modern way. reading this story was at times fun, others difficult, exciting, and frustrating. i don't know that i will ever call this a favorite, but that doesn't matter as much to me as if the book helps anyone out there to escape a gavin.

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carleesue's review

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dark emotional mysterious medium-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? It's complicated

3.0


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