Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - In Cold Blood

I liked how capote told the story of the murders from a perspective that included the victims as well as the murderers. Even though he did tell the stories of the murderers and made the reader feel quite sympathetic it didn't seem too sensationalized and like he excused the murderers. You could build a connection to the victims as well as the murderers but still could base your opinion on an almost objective retelling. (if you ignored Capote's bias towards Perry Smith, although not sure if he actually like him or if he was just sympathetic) Story telling to its finest.

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archiedh's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

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strange's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

It’s hard to really give this book a rating— it’s a 5 on the writing quality and impact, but somehow it just feels like there’s something missing that I can’t quite place.

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athereaderofbooks's review against another edition

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dark sad tense slow-paced

2.0

Clearly, I would not recommend this true-crime novel.

I will give kudos to a couple of aspects of this book:

1. It was organized in a notable way. It started with showing the past of both the victims and their killers. Their environments were taken into consideration and you developed an idea of their character. Later it led to the investigation and we found out how the murder occurred through confessionals. Truman Capote followed the case until its conclusion.

2. The entire book was thorough with everything. If something was mentioned it was never offhandedly, and we understood how everyone and everything contributed to the narrative.

But despite these factors, I hated this book. This is the first time that I have read a true crime book, and this most definitely affected my rating, but this was horrific. Why would I want to read about an entire family being murdered

because some thieves wanted money??

How does one find enjoyment in such a subject when they themself could one day be the victim of such an unsuspecting crime? The Clutters likely never thought of this likelihood and look what happened to them. The only thing this book added to my life was more anxiety, and I already have enough.

On top of this, there have been multiple people who have contested the accuracy of this book, saying that there were many pieces of opinion inserted and falsehoods added into the book. (Not just random people online, but people who themselves have analyzed this crime.)

This dragged on and on with a really excessive form of writing and the only interest I had was finishing this book so I could get it over with, understand what happened, and try to forget it.

And to me, most importantly, there were multiple instances where racial, homophobic, and in general degrading slurs were used. This includes but is not limited to the n-word, the f slur, and out-of-date referrals to Asian, Black, and Native American people.

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cherryredmarlene's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

i changed the rating from 4 to 5 stars because i think and talk about this so much it would be weird if i’d only give it 4

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