Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Carrie

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Carrie by Stephen King

65 reviews

grave_liminal's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

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

2.0

The objectification of women and minors, as well as the glorification of sexual assault, makes this book extremely hard to read. It also opens a very large discussion about fatphobia in literature.

If you removed every single female description and sex scene from this book, it would’ve been a solid 4 stars. The repetition of the “breast” descriptions were so frequent that it seemed like a joke, a book written by a 12 year old boy. Disappointed that this was my first experience reading a King novel, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Would never reread it, and would barely recommend it other than the purpose of being able to say you’ve read a horror classic.

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andranica's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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cammiem8's review against another edition

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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

2.5

An iconic and well conceived story, but there are so many strange choices in the prose, format, and style that take you out of it.

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louu's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

I had a blast reading this. The way it is narrated is on point. There's nothing to spare. I loved carrie, my baby did nothing wrong, ever. The world building? Great, with that ending. Sue Snell? Also my baby. No, this is not a serios review. I loved every part of this story. It was so graphic in my mind, i felt I was watching a movie.

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miachimochi's review against another edition

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dark emotional 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? Yes

4.5

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sassyshark's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-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? It's complicated

0.75

The book was not worth the paper it was written on—and I read the e-book.

Oh god, where to start.

The plot, was fine. A little predictable, but I suppose that lended itself towards the psychological horror aspects. For the first half the new articles were interrupting, abrupt, waste of words, highly ineffective as a method of transition, and insultingly repetitive. In the second half they helped illustrate the story, but were still thrown in seemingly at random and rather abruptly.

It is yet another book reducing the high school experience to bullying, PE, and prom. With some trauma to add some salt to this bland book.

The characters, are all 2D. The mother was such a stereotypical, almost cartoonish, villain that she lost all humanization. Ultimately reducing the drama and unnerving feelings that should have come

when the mom and Carrie snapped, as it felt like the inevitable conclusion—not that any person was capable of thrusting someone into a phycological break. I had the same problem with Chris, she was never humanized so you feel like she was getting her just desserts.

The writing style is a thing. I felt like I was on drugs. Between the seemingly random gaggle of words King has thrown in and the hyper sexualization of any women I am throughly disgusted. Not in a good look-at-the-epitome-of-horror way, but a in a why-are-you-mentioning-her-boobs-for-the-fourth-time-in-a-page way. (Even in necessary actions, like walking, are full of cruel descriptions and hyper sexualized. For example, from page 13 “Carrie stood swaying between the showers and the wall with its dime sanitary-napkin dispenser, slumped over, breasts pointing at the floor, her arms dangling limply. She looked like an ape.“ Let’s keep in mind Carrie is 16.) Even if one ignores the befuddling misrepresentation of how periods function (people with uteri, if you are bleeding that much on your first please speak to medical professional), the spaghetti-wall approach of words will make sure you stay confused. Now I must mention, I am absolutely enamored when authors use unnecessarily ostentatious words just because they ought to be used, if they are used correctly. King flips between a third grade vocabulary and words that would make an English college professor proud, seemingly at random. But this college professor would be appalled at the blatant disregard for the words’ definitions.

I am genuinely concerned for the horror genre if he is heralded as one of the best writers.

Furthermore King has the audacity to claim this a feminist book, because it has a strong female character. When juxtaposed with sentences like this: “She had bought a special brassiere to go with it, which gave her breasts the proper uplift (not that they actually needed it) but left their top halves uncovered.” That claim is appalling, and

mass murder

is not a “strong” way to deal with your problems.

To summarize, the plot was decent, but stuttering, the characters have personalities akin to a slightly salted wet cabbage, and King would greatly benefit from a female beta reader and a dictionary. Particularly if the female beta reader whacked him with the dictionary for every misused word or hyper sexualized action (but that would cause excessive brain damage).

The one good thing I can say is I have never had such hate based fixation on a book. I dragged my psyche kicking, screaming, and begging to be sent to hell—as it would be less torturous—through the book, just so I could say this was not a half-baked review. And so begins and ends my foray with Stephen King.

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moonprismpeach's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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maria_vkl's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.25

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kelseyharte's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.5

This was a fast-paced, attention-grabbing book that I didn't want to ever put down. I loved the writing style, since it switches up points of view often, it keeps your attention even more. It was told mostly through the third-person omniscient view of Carrie, but switches POVs at certain important moments. Sprinkled throughout the story are excerpts from books written about the events of the story, News articles and witness testimonies. I liked how the pace was changed at random and you get a look into what everyone around Carrie and in this fictional world thought of the situations and Carrie herself. Most of the characters are multidimensional with the exception of a few pure evil characters that have no redeeming qualities. It does have quite a bit of gore and a lot of disturbing parts, but it could be worse. Would recommend to anyone, even if you're not a fan of horror.

I've read several of King's books by now and I really don't get scared, I'm one of those people who doesn't understand how anyone could get scared from a book. BUT I will say the one part of the book that gave me chills and freaked me out for a second (of course there were plenty of times when I was disturbed or disgusted but nothing that would give me nightmares or actually scare me) was the part when the town drunk is giving his testimony from when he was in the police station and saw Carrie walking away from the school, after she trapped everyone inside and let them burn to death, and says this: "...she was all wet from that hydrant and covered in blood. She looked like she just crawled out of a car accident. But she was /grinning/. I never saw such a grin." When I saw the line that she was grinning after she committed mass murder, I got chills. Because up until that point, Carrie is portrayed as a victim, of bullying at school and abuse at home. So I sympathized with her, and then to see her lack of remorse or empathy as she goes on a killing spree is really freaky.
Also, Tommy is the only purely good, kind-hearted person in this story and he didn't deserve what he got.

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andylpzgal's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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