Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

103 reviews

maggiemcfly's review against another edition

challenging emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, and Body horror

Moderate: Blood, Death of parent, and Lesbophobia

olive_lol's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

4.25

The main draw of this book is its atmophere: unsettling, contemplative, and unique in use of the ocean, showcased in its lyrical and haunting prose. I can't get over the writing in this book—it fits the flowing, unnerving nature of the ocean so well.

The novel's horror is eerie and slowburn, so much so that at times, it may not really feel like horror at all, just a lingering unease. The horror aspects, I'd say, are most effective if a reader comes into the story already afraid of the ocean.

Seeing Leah's perspective from the past contrasted alongside her in the present creates a certain disconnect that leaves the reader questioning how, exactly, she could have changed so much. That said, the ending left a few more open questions than I would have liked, and some parts of it felt half-heartedly set up.

An eerie, unsettling read with haunting prose whose characters and storyline mirror the ocean it centers around.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, and Grief

Moderate: Death of parent, Suicide, Cursing, and Death

Minor: Blood and Vomit

autumnk3lly's review against another edition

challenging emotional tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

i am so fucking confused

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood

Minor: Death of parent

lefay_'s review against another edition

dark sad tense slow-paced

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

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Body horror, Blood, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Death of parent and Lesbophobia

kirkspockreads's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Medical content, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Blood, Body horror, Death, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicide, Suicide attempt, Grief, and Gore

theo_retical's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

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

3.5

Enjoyable, but a little frustrating in that things felt unexplained/ambiguous 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Vomit, Body horror, and Blood

Moderate: Abandonment and Death

shebbyreads's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Vomit, Body horror, and Blood

Moderate: Death of parent

alisonfaith426's review against another edition

emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Confinement, Sexual content, Death, Death of parent, and Grief

Minor: Animal death and Alcohol

noble_xoxo's review against another edition

challenging mysterious sad slow-paced

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

3.75

Interesting book. Often challenging to piece together the entire picture.  Characters are highly flawed but highly human. Goes where you expect it to. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Blood

Moderate: Abandonment

maeverose's review against another edition

mysterious sad

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.0

I’m unsure how I feel about this yet.

TL;DR: As other people have said, this isn’t so much horror as a book about grief with horror sprinkled throughout. I was interested to see what would happen the whole way through and I do tend to like books about grief, but in the end am left feeling overall ‘meh’ about the book.

A note on the horror elements for those worried about it:
If you’re especially bothered by body horror, gore, or themes of going insane I would go in prepared for that if you plan on reading it. I’m not a horror reader and I dislike reading those themes, but most of this book was fine for me (check my content warnings section for which parts to skip if you also dislike these themes but want to read anyway. You can’t really skip the ‘going insane’ stuff unless you just don’t read any of Leah’s chapters, but you’d be missing out on some parts of the story then). That being said, you know what your own limits are best. I have a moderate tolerance for gore in books and I’m rarely bothered by non-gory body horror. If you have a low tolerance overall, I’d probably skip it.

        Now on to my thoughts:
(Vague/minor plot spoilers, but not really since this is not a plot-focused book)

I liked the way the Centre was depicted as this mysterious corporate entity, and wish that was explored more, as well as

the whole sea creature thing

. I get that the horror and mystery elements aren’t the focus, the focus is on Miri’s grief, with the horror elements being a metaphorical parallel to losing a loved one to illness. But it’s left somewhat unclear whether or not it’s also actually happening. If it is actually happening, then that leaves me a bit frustrated with how Miri acted. She seemed so uninterested in finding answers or taking any sort of legal action against the Centre. At no point does the idea even come up to do that, and that seems so ridiculous to me given everything they kept quiet about and the entire way they acted and operated. If I were Miri I’d be pissed at them. I’d be demanding answers. She pretty much gave up after they stopped responding to her calls. I didn’t understand why she never took Leah to a doctor, especially given how much she obviously cares about her, why wasn’t she doing everything she could to help her?

When Juna met up with Miri and tried to explain what she found out and Miri cut her off and left, I was so annoyed. She seemed so uninterested in what Juna had to say and I would be the exact opposite. She didn’t seem at all shocked to learn that someone died on the same trip her wife was on…

In general Miri seemed much more focused on her own grief rather than being concerned for her wife who clearly went through an extremely traumatic experience. Again, if none of it is really real then it makes sense but with it being somewhat left up to interpretation, it was frustrating.

On that note, I’ll end with some quotes about grieving missing loved ones that I liked:

“-grieving was complicated by lack of certainty, that the hope inherent in a missing loved one was also a species of curse.”

“In almost every case, the sense of loss was convoluted by an ache of possibility, by the almost-but-not-quite-negligible hope of reprieve.”

“Grief is selfish: we cry for ourselves without the person we have lost far more than we cry for the person - but more than that, we cry because it helps. The grief process is also the coping process and if the grief is frozen by ambiguity, by the constant possibility of reversal, then so is the ability to cope.”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Gore, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicide, Terminal illness, Body horror, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Death, and Dementia

Moderate: Sexual content, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Death of parent, Eating disorder, Vomit, Cancer, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Lesbophobia and Fatphobia

There are depictions of people gradually losing their mind in confinement,

resulting in a suicide for one of them.

As for the gore: the worst of it (for me) was a description of an old norse torture method in chapter 4. Chapter 4 is entirely skippable if you want to avoid that, or just skip the first paragraph. Second is the eye trauma scene. If you wanna skip that, it’s the last paragraph of the last chapter in the Abyssal zone section (really wish the chapters were numbered lol). Besides that there is still body horror throughout, most of which isn’t exactly gory but some is.