Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Centre

I’ve been wanting to read this book for ages and the premise sounded right up my street.

As I got more into it, the storyline just seemed to fragment.

The author was talking about lots of different issues via the character and then when the real issue of how the centre work came through, I was surprised and kind of horrified but by the end it ended so abruptly, any progress or conclusion made was gone.

I would recommend this book for fans of Mexican Gothic, Earthling or Burnt Sugar because it is very claustrophobic and focuses on body horror as well as a very uncomfortable sexual situation that may trigger some people.

Some of the tangents in the book were just not developed as much as they could be but the narrator made this book incredibly engaging which is why I rated it higher than I would have otherwise.

Content Warnings

jamiee_f's review against another edition

Go to review page

I loved the premise, I liked our main character, and I was so excited to understand the mystery of The Centre! Anisa was sassy and online and very millenial which I appreciated. She's even kind of an unlikeable main character, which I usually enjoy. There was good commentary on success, friendships, relationships, finding yourself, being an immigrant/child of immigrants, cultural appropriation, who has a right to write which stories, class consciousness, and I liked most of that but it was a LOT to tackle all at once. Then it just.....absolutely dragged in the last half/third.

I couldn't motivate myself to finish

after it seemed like we were slowly driving towards magic cannibalism without a real explanation, and it seemed like all our characters were on board with it. I guessed it would be some sort of cannibalism pretty early on, but by the end it felt like the metaphor of cannibalizing people's souls for cannibalizing culture got SO heavy handed but also didn't go far enough.

I looked up the ending after I met the men who created the center by paying slaves to participate and submit their bodies/souls to the process, because the book was moving too slowly, and it was no longer fun how unlikable all these characters were. I was more interested in understanding the how and why of the process, that's what I was hoping for, but it didn't feel fleshed out enough (no pun intended). I also didn't like the reveal at the end that our main character decided to dedicate her own soul to the Centre. Like...why? It was unsatisfying to me.

I wanted to like it, I wish the ending third did it for me, because the premise was so call and the first two thirds I enjoyed! I would try another work from this author.

Content Warnings

More...