Reviews tagging 'Rape'

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

44 reviews

elvenpanther's review against another edition

dark mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Lindqvist managed to write this in such a way, that despite being uncomfortable at how twisted much of this novel was, I was throughly engrossed and could not put it down. I enjoyed how he wove the story through the view points of several members of the community and how he tied all of those "individual" narratives together.
This novel was dark, and gritty, and explored so much more than "monster" trope. In a way, it focused on how monstrous people could be. How sometimes it's not what goes bump in the night that you need to fear, but instead your neighbor or your classmate. It explored broken people, broken families and broken children and their struggle to navigate the world when they feel alone.
I didn't really know what to expect when starting this, and yes some parts of the novel made me squirm, but overall I enjoyed it. I had watched the Swedish film adaptation after and I will say I appreciate how much more in depth the book went. It made for a much more complex and visceral narrative than the movie.
*As a warning, the book does strongly contain the topic of pedophilia*

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Murder, Bullying, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual assault, Pedophilia, Rape, Toxic relationship, Sexual violence, and Medical trauma

Minor: Animal death

nerdy_yinzer's review against another edition

Extremely explicit descriptions of pedophilia - no thanks. It was on the recommended shelf at Half Price Books and I thought it’d be something akin to a Salem’s Lot kind of scary vampire book…my bad.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Sexual content, Rape, Violence, Murder, and Pedophilia

cousinrachel's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

The movie (Swedish original) had a much more "spare" plot with fewer characters and tangents--better for it, I think. My goodness, this book was all over the place--I think I read it about ten years ago but IIRC, 1/2 of the plot was about Oskar and Eli, the rest being side characters doing god knows what.

Also, the violence was gratuitous beyond belief, to the point of being ludicrous. My lord. Did we need that much information about the

alcoholic pedophile

?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Death, Bullying, Violence, Rape, Pedophilia, and Sexual violence

A homeless, alcoholic man sexually abuses a child prostitute whose pimp has knocked out his front teeth. This man later develops an attraction to a different child, a vampire, becomes devoted to the child and enslaves himself to finding victims. When he ceases to be useful the child eats him, but he doesn't fully die and becomes a zombie-vampire. The zombie man then rapes the child.

The vampire child murders several people in order to eat them: she tricks someone into thinking she is injured so that the person tries to help and lets his guard down, enabling the child to kill him. A woman survives an attack only to become a vampire herself, and later sets herself on fire to avoid harming anyone else. Her fiance seeks revenge for her against the vampire, who overpowers and graphically slaughters him.

thefigtree's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

vampire horror but in a real-world way; it is

pedophilia and genital mutilation and bullying and abuse rather than angsty teenagers or adventure or itwv-silly-fun.

it's very dark and i think you have to aware of that going in to enjoy it at all. but it's so well written, it's atmospheric and sensory and the constant switches in pov work so well with the pacing.

the novel is uncomfortable to read and at many parts made me physically curl up and cringe but it's good and it's clever and i liked it. it definitely could have gone on for another 100/150 pages and been an appropriate length too (with a more fleshed out ending!!!!). 

it's definitely going to throw you off if you go in for the vampires (or because it often gets advertised just as a 'lgbtq vampire book'), you have to be prepared for the content and how it's handled, but if you are it goes to show that when vampires are done well it really does work.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Pedophilia, Adult/minor relationship, and Rape

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Self harm, and Suicide

Minor: Vomit, Domestic abuse, and Homophobia

kaiyakaiyo's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

0.5

If you’re into “vampire myth but make it extremely, graphically pedophilic” then this book is for you! I, however, abhorred everything about this. 

Scene after scene of child molestation and frankly unnecessary harm on women and children… the few women characters were there only to be extremely bad mothers or sexual objects… though to be fair, ALL of the characters were extremely unrealistic fucked up caricatures. 

This book was far too long (because of all the pedophilic content shoved in) and had a lot of strange subplots that all came together eventually with no real satisfaction. The only actually interesting thing about this book was how it dealt with Eli’s gender; disgusting castration scene aside, this book was surprisingly faithful to the inherent genderqueer-ness that has existed in vampire myth since the beginning. I’m sure someone could write or has written really interesting papers on gender in this. That’s the only nice thing I can say though, otherwise this was a moderately interesting vampire myth idea squandered on gratuitous trauma porn. What is it with Swedes and pedophilia??? 

Nasty book, the author should be jailed

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Vomit, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual violence, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Animal death, Blood, Rape, Gore, Bullying, Death, Pedophilia, Body horror, and Sexual assault

helenope's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.5

This was a book? I guess? if you want to read something with fucked up characters and really gory scenes, go for it, because other than that it lacks in everything else. Also it only starts getting minimally exciting past the 50% mark.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Murder, Pedophilia, and Rape

ahh_listen's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Rape, Trafficking, Child abuse, and Pedophilia

Moderate: Drug abuse, Transphobia, and Fatphobia

cryscries's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I watched the original movie first before the book and after reading it I can say it’s pretty faithful to the source material. It was such an amazing read that I didn’t feel like it was 472 pages. It’s dark and emotional and I love the relationship that forms between oskar and eli. I loved reading all the different perspectives of people living in that town and how the events unfolded and connected. Definitely a really good read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual content, Murder, Blood, and Self harm

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide attempt

I feel like the contents of this book ranges from moderate - graphic. There is a character who is attracted to eli named Hänkan - his perspectives can be very uncomfortable to read because he does go into a bit of detail about his attraction in the beginning of the book when he is somewhat introduced to attempting to r word eli towards the end of the book. Eli’s past holds a lot of trauma but does not glorify it in any way of anything it’s more character background of their past but can also be uncomfortable to read. Bits and pieces in the book talk about suicide and self harm from characters who are being bullied or depressed from oskar and eli— though Virginia is a tw for self harm because of what she is going through in the story.

noble_reads's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

Succeeds in being properly scary, especially in the second half when all the action really reaches a crescendo. Creepy and uncomfortable.
The ending left a little to he desired in my opinion, open. I'll definitely pick up the collection of short stories which is supposed to include a sequel.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Sexual violence, Gore, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, Animal death, Bullying, Child abuse, Excrement, Medical trauma, Murder, Medical content, Torture, Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Cannibalism, Fire/Fire injury, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Violence, Vomit, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Rape, and Self harm

mikeprosser's review against another edition

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape