Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

37 reviews

violetwraith's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.0


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cryptidenthusiast's review against another edition

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

1.5

Well that got really weird towards the end. 

EDIT:
Okay so after sitting with this book for a bit longer, I dropped my review from a 3 to a 1.5. The initial premise was good, if a little bit stereotypical: kid is listening to a voice of his “imaginary friend” that turns out to be more sinister then originally thought. 

Further into act 3 though, things went absolutely off the rails, and took a severe nose drive. 

The sudden religious spin was unneeded and unnecessary, and did the book more harm then good. We figure out the ‘Nice Man’ is actually Satan? And this is where I personally hated it. Depicting two characters dealing with addiction as ‘the devil whispering in their ear’? Or a literal child wanting to lash out and hurt the person sexually assaulting her is her ‘giving in to the devil’? I don’t know, it just left a very sour taste in my mouth the longer I thought about it. There’s enough demonization of addiction and mental illness out there, we didn’t need more. And damning a child who’s being assaulted because she wanted to hurt her abuser back? Not a great look. 

Also the entire thing with Mary Katherine?? Her final arc is her coming to the realization that thinking of a “sin” is not equal to actually committing it…..but she IS pregnant. By thinking about sex? Which just negates everything she learns?

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sarahbethhh's review against another edition

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

4.25

Character study meets thriller meets religious exploration. The first half seemed to drag, but paid off in the end. Incredibly creepy imagery. Check trigger warnings before reading. 

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nrogers_1030's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5


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chrstnareads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.25


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hxppyhxt's review

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

2.0

2 Stars instead of 1 because I really enjoyed the first half or so of the book.
Far too long of a book. I really enjoyed the first half or so of the book, then I got to the point where I was like there is still half of this book to read and everything in the summary has been done. And the random capitalization in words was so annoying, I thought they would spell something (especially when the author set this up to be the case with 
Spoilerthe journal) but spelling them out in many places was just fruitless. Very frustrating. I decided to DNF after an entire chapter of the uppercase nonsense where I spent so long trying to decode it only to get something along the lines of "HIMEEEEEEEIEEE". So many "hE". I thought that maybe it was intentional to just refer to a specific character in this way, but then even within the chapter it was not consistently "hE", sometimes it would just be a normal "he", which blew that theory out of the water. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to figure it out but honestly it got to the point where I didn't even care enough to figure it out.
Some of the twists were well set up so that you could figure them out or at least get a sense that something was amiss. Others felt completely random and felt like they had virtually no setup or foreshadowing.
SpoilerI don't mind some religious undertones, but in this case it really felt like two different books. The first half really had very little indication that the plot was headed towards a Christian allegory, and then in the second half it just felt like "and guess what, this is Satan. Oh and this? Yea she's actually the Virgin Mary. Oh yea, this is God. This is the Tree of Good and Evil. This is Eve, you know from the garden of Eden? And this is literal Hell" and on and on. I feel like setting it up more at the beginning would have made it feel less random.

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paronomaniac's review

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-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? Yes

4.0


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amberjackonski's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5


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theimposter's review

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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bibrarian_'s review

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

3.5

If you ever wanted to read NOS4A2 by Joe Hill but weirdly religious, this is the book for you.

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