Reviews tagging 'Self harm'

The Ghost That Ate Us by Daniel Kraus

1 review

scaredy_bear's review against another edition

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slow-paced
  • Loveable characters? No

1.5

If you are triggered by the constant mention of peoples weight, this is not for you. The author mentions weight in pounds at least 21 times. Assuming I didn’t miss flagging any, that’s an average of it appearing every 14.3 pages. This is only the mention of weight given in pounds. This does not include the many other times weight is mentioned.
The last words in the book are literally “44 pounds”.


The author including himself with in the story also is so cringe.
It’s revealed early on that one of survivors wants to speak with the author because he’s a big fan of the authors books. He raves about them. It’s weird to have him hyping himself through this character. Later he has this same character ask a bunch of questions about his previous books. Idk if he’s trying to promote them or make them seem extra deep by talking about the metaphors/themes in the books but it is weird as heck. He complains about being summoned by one of these imaginary characters while hes on a book press tour for one of hia other books. He complains that he has to drive an imaginary long distance to speak to an imaginary character. Ick. Then at the end of the book it’s revealed that the main character (and his cult) specially chose Kraus to spread word of the murders through his writing. They cast a lil spell by chanting the first sentence of his first book which Kraus says no one knows and its soooo obscure. Why this cult chose him (besides him making the decisions of this imaginary cult of course) is confusing. He’s not that big of a name, personally I only know him through is co-authoring with George A Romero and Guillermo Del Toro, and he writes fiction. So why would he be their choice to write a “non-fiction” account of their story?.


Initially, I thought the actual ghost story was going to be enough to push past the above but upon reaching the end I can assure you, it’s not. The climax left a lot to be desired.

Ultimately I would not recommend this novel.

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