Reviews tagging 'Suicide attempt'

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung

13 reviews

caitlindoesntread's review

dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.25

(Short story collection (10 stories): Horror, social commentary) Read this in four days. It possibly damaged me forever?? Some of the body horror descriptions are so grotesque that I literally felt sick. However, lots of the stories were written beautifully and at each twist I found myself pausing to think about the metaphorical implications or what real-life issue it could have been representing against the backdrop of a strange, scary, magical and suspenseful reality. Some of the stories I really enjoyed are "The Head, "The embodiment", The Frozen Finger" and "Snare". These were short, to the point and gripped me throughout the story. Some stories that I really did not enjoy were "Goodbye, my love", "Home sweet home" and "Ruler of the winds and sands. For the last two that I mentioned, I literally had no clue what was going on, especially in "Ruler of the winds and sands" and they were long, boring and repetitive. I neither liked nor disliked "Cursed bunny", "Scars" and "The reunion". Although "Scars" was WAY too long.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, Grief, Incest, Kidnapping, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Self harm, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Torture, Violence, and Vomit

Moderate: Alcoholism, Antisemitism, Sexual content, Addiction, Alcohol, Car accident, Drug use, Infidelity, and War

xanthekm's review

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Excrement, Death, Violence, Suicide attempt, Medical trauma, Grief, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Pregnancy, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Death of parent, and Child death

hedsek's review

challenging dark mysterious sad medium-paced

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

3.25

It's difficult to rate this book, as some of the stories were hard for me to understand without understanding their cultural context. Sometimes I felt like I wasn't able to get at any deeper meaning to some of the more gory stories, which left me with the feeling that things were just done for shock value (which is probably wrong). The concepts and ideas in this bundle are really intriguing and some of the stories do get stuck in your head quite a bit because they are so unique and make you uncomfortable for quite some time after reading them.

The first two stories are very gory, and I don't think they give a very good impression of the rest of the bundle so don't stop reading if you dislike those two. The other stories can be gory as well, but I feel like they have more to offer aside from that. 'Snare' (definitely horrifying in its own way) was my favourite, and the last three stories are a good read as well.

I'm personally not really a fan of the writing style as it can get a bit repetitive, but it's also not offensive and it reads pretty easily.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Torture, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Death, Gore, and Violence

Moderate: Pregnancy, Excrement, Miscarriage, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Vomit, Blood, Incest, Medical content, Murder, Rape, Sexual violence, and Suicide

Minor: Ableism and War