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3.39 AVERAGE
3.39 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Oh dear, how am I ever going to review this one? Let me stew for a bit...
read the whole thing while sick in a hospital bed on the departure lounge of an airport incredibly boring
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A literary classic, this is where the term “masochism” comes from.
A man signs the first ever kink contract in order to be a woman’s slave. By 2023, a masochist is known as someone who craves pain. But here we find its origin story in which masochism is less about pain and more about subjugating yourself as slave to someone in which to worship, especially as it relates to doing so beneath a woman’s purview. The unequal power dynamics resulting in woman’s triumph were so uneven in 1921 that a word was created in order to fulfill this anomaly. Flash forward to masochism fulfilling a meaning that does still relate to unequal power dynamics but for any gender which seeks pain and humiliation under a sadist’s (the word originating from the author Marquis de Sade) purview.
“If I am not permitted to enjoy the happiness of love, fully and wholly, I want to taste its pains and torments to the very dregs; I want to be maltreated and betrayed by the woman I love, and the more cruelly the better.”
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice: None
POV: Solo 1st
dark
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Being gay, asexual and not into BDSM, I went in expecting a profoundly unrelatable book that would expose me to something I'm not entirely used to but with a side of allegory. What I got shocked me in how close to home it hit. Never before have I been so hypnotized by a book. I read it all in one sitting and I am haunted by the experiance. Surprisingly, this is a masterpiece. And thankfully, there is no smut.
funny
reflective
tense
medium-paced
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
tense
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes