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javabones's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
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? No
I thought this was going to be a thriller/mystery but it turned out to be a disaster in itself. Finished it out of stubbornness and hope that it would go somewhere. It did not. The writing style draggggged on and it was so bizzare and full of gross sex details?? It was so bad it was funny, after you got over how uncomfortable it was. It deserves a lot of trigger warnings, which makes it seem interesting, but literally nothing happens.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Cursing, Gore, Racism, Sexual content, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Alcohol
orireading's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Vomit
Moderate: Blood and Alcohol
Minor: Suicide
the author CONSTANTLY mentioned the 13-year-old character being chubby/fat, what she was eating, what her body looked like, etc. in a way that was rarely relevant to what was actually happening in the scene. that was weird honestlyeuphoriaonpluto's review against another edition
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Where do I even begin with this one?
The 3 stars I'm giving this book is a compromise, as, in actuality, its two halves are two separate books in my head and I'd give the first one 2 stars and the second one 4.
The first half of this book was so boring I have no idea how I got through it. Nothing happened. It was so repetitive at times I wondered if there was an editing mistake and a paragraph had been pasted twice.
The second half, surprisingly, became more and more interesting. By the end I was on the edge of my seat, the way I was promised to be.
One major flaw that was consistent throughout the entire book was the writing style.
1. It was terribly pretentious. Literary fiction undeniably prides itself with complex prose, but this felt like the author was a college student trying to reach a word quota for an essay. It's like he was writing it with a thesaurus right next to him so he could make sure he sounds as intelligent as possible. It was insuffarable at times.
2. Did Sigmund Freud write this book? What was with the obsession with sexuality? Why did everything have to be compared to sex. Why did we have to be reminded of how horny these people are at least 5 times a chapter? I, myself, may be asexual and therefore not entirely well-versed with how libido works, but, surely, middle-aged men don't get erections because????? the sun is out????? and it's a nice day????? Even worse is the fact that this obsession with sexual metaphors didn't spare the teenage children of the protagonists, either. It was disgusting. At times it made me feel like a pedophile by proxy for reading these words. Why did I have to read about a sixteen-year-old jerking off and what kind of porn he likes? Why did I have to read a description of a sixteen-year-old boy and a thirteen-year-old girl observed by their mother, which featured nipples and "curvy" and "jiggle" and a swimsuit straining at the bottom? And why, for the love of god, did there have to be a scene where this middle-aged woman fantasises about making out with a cashier she herself describes as "could be in high school or out of it"????? The way the protagonists' children's bodies were described as sexual in nature was made even more disturbing by the fact that, quite in contrast, their mantal maturity was decreased so much it was like they were 5 and 8, respectively. How is a sixteen-year-old old enough for me to have to read a sentence about his balls, but not old enough to be told that there was a blackout in the city? What is happening here????
TLDR: First half sucked, second half was great, and it would have been ten times better if it had been written by someone who wasn't obsessed with genitals and metaphors about erections and orgasms.
The 3 stars I'm giving this book is a compromise, as, in actuality, its two halves are two separate books in my head and I'd give the first one 2 stars and the second one 4.
The first half of this book was so boring I have no idea how I got through it. Nothing happened. It was so repetitive at times I wondered if there was an editing mistake and a paragraph had been pasted twice.
The second half, surprisingly, became more and more interesting. By the end I was on the edge of my seat, the way I was promised to be.
One major flaw that was consistent throughout the entire book was the writing style.
1. It was terribly pretentious. Literary fiction undeniably prides itself with complex prose, but this felt like the author was a college student trying to reach a word quota for an essay. It's like he was writing it with a thesaurus right next to him so he could make sure he sounds as intelligent as possible. It was insuffarable at times.
2. Did Sigmund Freud write this book? What was with the obsession with sexuality? Why did everything have to be compared to sex. Why did we have to be reminded of how horny these people are at least 5 times a chapter? I, myself, may be asexual and therefore not entirely well-versed with how libido works, but, surely, middle-aged men don't get erections because????? the sun is out????? and it's a nice day????? Even worse is the fact that this obsession with sexual metaphors didn't spare the teenage children of the protagonists, either. It was disgusting. At times it made me feel like a pedophile by proxy for reading these words. Why did I have to read about a sixteen-year-old jerking off and what kind of porn he likes? Why did I have to read a description of a sixteen-year-old boy and a thirteen-year-old girl observed by their mother, which featured nipples and "curvy" and "jiggle" and a swimsuit straining at the bottom? And why, for the love of god, did there have to be a scene where this middle-aged woman fantasises about making out with a cashier she herself describes as "could be in high school or out of it"????? The way the protagonists' children's bodies were described as sexual in nature was made even more disturbing by the fact that, quite in contrast, their mantal maturity was decreased so much it was like they were 5 and 8, respectively. How is a sixteen-year-old old enough for me to have to read a sentence about his balls, but not old enough to be told that there was a blackout in the city? What is happening here????
TLDR: First half sucked, second half was great, and it would have been ten times better if it had been written by someone who wasn't obsessed with genitals and metaphors about erections and orgasms.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pedophilia and Sexual content
Moderate: Racism, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Islamophobia, Alcohol, and War
mangofandango's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Oof. A hard read, but so riveting that I stayed up late and finished it in just a few days over Christmas. It’s not good Christmas reading! It’s extremely compelling, but also a long stomach ache of anxiety. It’s exactly the kind of story about nuclear war/end of the world/major unprecedented global disaster story that isn’t usually told - what happens when you’re not at the epicenter, when you happen to be in the “right” place (sort of) to not know what has happened but to still know something terrible has happened - and our phones can’t tell us, our TVs can’t tell us, governors can declare states of emergency but can’t tell us about them. How do you cope, what do you do, who do you trust? How do race and class come into play and how can you face the person you are under those kinds of tests? That’s what this book is. Some of the writing made me uncomfortable because it is cringe inducing (like, there’s a lot of weird, cringy bits about genitals specifically?)…but I also really liked many aspects of the writing - the changing perspectives, the omniscient narrator asides, the way the magnitude of what happened (though we don’t know exactly what it is) is communicated through things like migration patterns and optimistic phone chargers… yeah. Clearly I’m in my feelings about this. It’s a lot, but it’s an experience.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror and Vomit
Moderate: Death, Alcohol, and War
sarah984's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
There were some things here that had the potential to be interesting - the "guess who’s coming to dinner" scenario with the white people who desperately want to believe they're not racist (or that they don't SEEM racist, these characters are preoccupied with seeming) but resent the class/race divisions not going the way they would expect, the mundane weirdness of living through a disaster, some of the things with the animals. However, the prose is extremely dense, full of short sentences, weird metaphors and unpleasant sexuality, and in the end it just kind of felt like a chore to read it. It also drove me insane that they spent all that time complaining about not knowing anything but refused to listen to the radio.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content and Vomit
Moderate: Cancer, Confinement, Gore, Racism, Excrement, Medical content, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal death, Child death, Suicide, Terminal illness, Islamophobia, and War
There is a scene involving a person’s teeth falling out.mosscovereddreams's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Racial slurs, Blood, Vomit, and Alcohol
julied's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Sexual content, Vomit, and Alcohol
Moderate: Racism and Islamophobia
Minor: Blood, Religious bigotry, and War
jmcordero's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Drug use and Alcohol
Minor: Medical content
nytefall_library's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.25
Where to begin…. (Potential spoilers)
This book was sold to me as a type of apocalyptic story that would be like a thriller and mystery with tense moments and a murder mystery feel. I don’t feel like I read that book. The adult characters in the story are horrible - all of them. They are arrogant, rude and so self absorbed to think they’re the most important people when they’re not. The children are the only ones to act as their age and the least annoying characters in this book. Amanda and Clay are beyond strange and when they meet the owners of the house I honestly didn’t know the story could get worse. G. H and Ruth are just as rude and selfish as Amanda and Clay - also who drives out of town to their holiday home knowing you have people staying there??? The subtle racism, fat shaming and sexism in the story was just so irrelevant to the whole story and some sentences were far too over descriptive and didn’t lend anything further to the story. The only interesting bit, where the story pace gets slightly faster and more interesting was right at the end. This is also where Ruth and Amanda started to act like actual human beings and not just a 2d version of themselves. If the rest of the book was like the last few chapters I may have rated this slightly higher. Also make sure you like abrupt endings because that’s all you’re left with. No answers - I just assumed they all died and the world ended.
This book was sold to me as a type of apocalyptic story that would be like a thriller and mystery with tense moments and a murder mystery feel. I don’t feel like I read that book. The adult characters in the story are horrible - all of them. They are arrogant, rude and so self absorbed to think they’re the most important people when they’re not. The children are the only ones to act as their age and the least annoying characters in this book. Amanda and Clay are beyond strange and when they meet the owners of the house I honestly didn’t know the story could get worse. G. H and Ruth are just as rude and selfish as Amanda and Clay - also who drives out of town to their holiday home knowing you have people staying there??? The subtle racism, fat shaming and sexism in the story was just so irrelevant to the whole story and some sentences were far too over descriptive and didn’t lend anything further to the story. The only interesting bit, where the story pace gets slightly faster and more interesting was right at the end. This is also where Ruth and Amanda started to act like actual human beings and not just a 2d version of themselves. If the rest of the book was like the last few chapters I may have rated this slightly higher. Also make sure you like abrupt endings because that’s all you’re left with. No answers - I just assumed they all died and the world ended.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Terminal illness, Blood, and Vomit
Moderate: Sexism, Medical content, and Alcohol
Minor: Body shaming and Grief