Reviews with content warning for Vomit - Leave the World Behind

Reviews tagging 'Vomit'

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

149 reviews

campirebat's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

3.5

Beautifully written exploration of what happens when humans can no longer logic their way to safety, and the parental anxiety one feels having kids in times like these.

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epeolatri's review against another edition

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slow-paced

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

1.5

Okay, I can see what this book was trying to do. It’s rare to read books about the start of the end of the world, and for that it’s unique and interesting. The characters were terribly boring and so one-dimensional. I didn’t care even a bit about any of them. The use of the third person omniscient narrator had its purpose when it could give us small bits of information on what was happening in the world outside these two families, but other than that I feel like it did a disservice to the story. Had it been written in first person maybe the urgency of the situation and the terror the characters felt would’ve seemed more real to the reader. I was mostly annoyed at their choices and the way they only ever seemed to talk about what they should do but never actually did any of it. This book needed more action and less words.
On that note, the author really really likes his metaphors and similes. Without them this book could’ve been about 100 pages shorter. An entire two or three pages were just a list of what a woman bought at the grocery store. The author also seemed weirdly obsessed with sex. At least three times I was made to read through a paragraph of a character masturbating, one of which was a minor. There was a description of a thirteen year old in a bathing suit that made me very uncomfortable. I’m not sure why the characters genitals were deemed so important to the plot.
This book should have been a lot of things, but ended up just a weird, overly wordy mess that I barely managed to get through. Maybe the netflix movie will be better.

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inkylabyrinth's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A very normal family from Brooklyn is vacationing on Long Island when the owners of the home show up, claiming there has been some kind of event in the city.

I'm shelving this as horror because it reads more like a quiet horror novel more than anything else. I really vibed with the tension and mystery as well as Rose, the clever and observant 13-year-old daughter.

This reminded me of Last Day: A Novel and The Blue Book of Nebo--speculative maybe-end-of-the-world fiction that's really a study of humanity.

I'm happy to have rescued this book from the bargain bin at Walmart.

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