Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

51 reviews

isammv's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad slow-paced

3.5


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brittishliterature's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

4.75


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fancy_franci's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0


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katya_orlova's review against another edition

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dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced

3.5


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akissforcatullus's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

3.5

Well, where to start? I can’t say I haven’t been dreading writing a review—this being because I feel as though I cannot put properly into words what I feel. I’ll try, though. Finishing the book kindled an   extreme heavy-heartedness, as well as a mourning-feeling for the family that deserved so much more time. The final paragraph of this novel tugged at my heart strings, and left me with an intense sense of emptiness. 

My biggest qualm is how noticeably biased this book can be towards Perry. Now, this goes without saying that Perry’s tragic life does deserve sympathy, but, it just seems unreliable at times; invoking slight scepticism and concern as to whether something actually happened or was just contrived or hypothesised by the writer. This applies, too, with the Clutter family’s personal life. There are parts I feel that were added and elongated insincerely, like Bonnie’s illnesses and strifes. Also want to add, this book did initiate this momentary hyper-vigilance on my part. I usually am a kind of vigilant person, but upon reading this book I felt an already existing fear become substantiated and intensified. I can’t say it’s necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly was haunting. 

Regardless of my personal negative emotion towards this book, it deserves credit for the sheer amount of effort put into it as well as its execution. I commend the writing for keeping me fairly interested despite my hesitance in continuing—of course certain chunks of information felt at times superfluous, but I appreciated it nonetheless. The unreliability, the—what essentially was—confirmation bias, the gruesomeness of the murders, the horrid themes, the occasionally tedious bits of information, all retracted a 4 star rating. I also didn’t feel pleased with giving it a 4 or higher star as I don’t particularly enjoy novels of this nature, no matter how well it may be written. I hope this review is coherent. I’m too tired to map out exactly what I wanted to say as well as what was said. 

There’s a lot missing out. There’s a lot more I want to express, like my deep anguish for the poor family, and how certain parts of the novel will probably remain cemented in my mind, but I’ll leave it for you, dear reader, to experience it for yourself. (Edit: I advise you not to, actually. Thinking back on it now, I could’ve lived life perfectly fine having not read this book. So, no, despite how dedicated the author was, this is not a book I recommend.) 

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meganpbennett's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

2.5

I'm not sure what I think of my first true crime story (recommended by a True Crime aficionado librarian I know). The story was interesting enough, with Capote showing readers how the convicted committed the crime, and how the felt about it. 

I found In Cold Blood not what I expected. It wasn't gripping or page turning (in fact, I think I finished it out of pure desire to finish it and not because I especially liked it). I wasn't a huge fan of the writing style, nor of the emphasis placed on how non-remorseful Perry and Dick were over the whole thing. 

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houndoflove1985's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced

4.0


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cjfrank1's review against another edition

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challenging informative mysterious slow-paced

2.75

This book gives me major ~serial killer twitter stan~ vibes. The structure of the text could have been better and there is a lot of focus on random characters that does give an incite into varying viewpoints but was kind of unnecessary. 

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carsonlott's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative tense medium-paced

4.5

i really really enjoyed this book. capote invented the true crime, nonfiction novel and is an absolute genius. however, some parts of the book felt unnecessarily dense — like an information dump. despite this, the story was absolutely captivating and even made me feel nauseous at some points. would recommend to anyone with a tough stomach kr true crime lover, 4.5/5. 

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creativeerosion's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

3.0


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