Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Surrender Your Sons by Adam Sass

11 reviews

sssssoup's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.5

This is a very important book, but it’s definitely not for everyone. It handles some very heavy subject matter, and I would highly recommend you know what you’re getting into before you start reading (the author did include content warnings at the front of the book though).

That said, I really did love reading this book. I was on the edge of my seat from beginning to end, I couldn’t put it down. The way it’s written is very engaging, and I was dying to find out what happened next. The characters also feel very realistic and I thought the author struck a good balance with how they all reacted to the incredibly stressful and traumatizing situations. 

While this is definitely a very dark story with some very chilling elements, it’s hopeful as well. It’s ultimately about breaking the cycle of abuse and trauma and making sure that bad things don’t happen to more people in the future. As a queer person myself, I found it really interesting how the author managed to balance queer joy and queer pain. This book will stick with me, and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Domestic abuse, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, and Grief

Moderate: Alcoholism, Confinement, Cursing, Panic attacks/disorders, Alcohol, Outing, Sexism, Sexual content, and Misogyny

Minor: Death of parent, Lesbophobia, Medical content, Transphobia, Biphobia, Gun violence, Infidelity, Body shaming, Deadnaming, Suicide attempt, and Vomit

mengzhenreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Damn, this was really intense.

Despite the fact that the timeframe for this book was absolutely bonkers, I really enjoyed this. Something about this book really touched my heart and had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. Definitely check the content warnings before reading it but it's really good. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Homophobia, Kidnapping, and Suicide

Moderate: Death, Hate crime, Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, Forced institutionalization, and Sexual content

Minor: Transphobia, Biphobia, Religious bigotry, and Gun violence

orcamagicka's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.75

Reading this as a queer trans guy after watching Midnight Mass did not bode well for my newly developed priest kink nor my father issues. God help me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Grief, Death, Murder, Child abuse, Suicide, and Homophobia

Moderate: Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, and Sexual content

Minor: Pregnancy and Transphobia

ladylaurenexplorer's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

This was so gut wrenching! I was sucked into the plots, it was so good. Connor had a very strong presence he and you were just rooting for him to make it. This plot was so interconnected and mysterious with so many twists and turns. I can admit got very Hollywood at times but I didn’t mind it in the grand scheme of things. You will become very uncomfortable and I cried. This is a surviving story about a conversion camp!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

Moderate: Homophobia, Gun violence, and Hate crime

Minor: Sexual content, Suicide, Pregnancy, and Physical abuse

cheesepuppy's review against another edition

dark emotional

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

I swear on my life I did not know I was getting into a conversion camp story. I went to tell my spouse that this story was not what I prepared to read and started to read them the description. I quickly found I had just failed to read the description.

All that aside, this book was amazing!!! So well written. I can’t believe the majority of the story one happened over the span of a couple days. Would definitely recommend this one. Read the content warnings first though

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Murder, Physical abuse, Suicide, Torture, and Sexual content

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide attempt

booksthatburn's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

As a queer person this was hard to read at times, and I appreciate that this a thriller set at a conversion therapy camp over a few days rather than being a longer saga set at the camp. I like the narrative balance between events at the camp and the summer leading up to it. As a thriller it’s pretty effective, I was genuinely surprised by some of the reveals at the end. When everyone running the camp is terrible by virtue of being someone who would run a conversion therapy camp… that makes for a believably large suspect pool and a compelling mystery for the protagonist to solve.

One thing which bothers me about the plot is that the central mystery is what happened years before to a character who is disabled in the present and dies shortly after the story begins. It's a mystery that could have been solved by the disabled person communicating at all with Connor earlier than when he did... instead of the actual method which relied on him dying in order for the information to be passed. It used the disabled character, Ricky, as a catalyst for how the reader enters Connor's story, and as part of the motivation for Connor's actions, and once it does begin focusing on him it's by necessity through other people's perspectives, or through things he left behind. On the other hand, part of the point is that Ricky's autonomy was impeded and his disability was caused by something related to the camp that Connor is now trying to escape, so it's just as possible that this dismissal of Ricky is on purpose, as part of the evil stuff that's happening. I'm not sure what to think about it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping, Emotional abuse, Blood, Violence, Child abuse, Homophobia, Murder, Suicide, and Death

Moderate: Sexual content and Gun violence

Minor: Ableism

alyshkalia's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Physical abuse, Suicide, Violence, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Blood, Child abuse, Confinement, Gaslighting, Grief, Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, and Transphobia

Minor: Medical content, Pregnancy, Sexism, Suicide attempt, and Islamophobia

lycanhood's review against another edition

Too YA leaning for me. The pacing was super frustrating, and I just wasn't into what was happening.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Hate crime, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Mental illness, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Outing, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

postal_kat's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad fast-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Hate crime, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, and Suicide

Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Sexual content and Transphobia

murder

biblioleah's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

this was a really strong book, and i think it brings a lot of great discussions to the table. i did have a few issues with the cheating and the characters and the timeline of things (like the whole book takes place over basically one day and that makes zero sense) but i’d easily still recommend this.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Biphobia, Blood, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Hate crime, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Trafficking, Transphobia, Violence, and Vomit

Moderate: Racism and Adult/minor relationship

Minor: Deadnaming