Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Manhunt

This is one of the worst books I've ever read. It was absolutely unreadable, on multiple levels.

The writing was extremely poor. So much so that it was incredibly difficult to tell whose viewpoint we were in at any given point. The characters relied very heavily on stereotypes & were generally one dimensional. The one character that was given more dimension was consistently treated poorly & discussed negatively even by people that she was supposed to be close with. The body horror was near constant & added nothing to the plot. Every single sexual scene was written to shock & disgust not just the reader but also to make the characters feel shame & disgust with themselves & people like them. Not only that but the aftermath of the sexual encounters left either one or both characters involved feeling violated in some way. Again, this book relies on and heavily perpetuates negative stereotypes about trans people specifically and the LGBTQ+ community & women in general. (I came across this while writing this review but this is the same author who proudly proclaimed on Twitter "I'm a woman, and a professional author, and I've never written anything without at least one rape scene in it." which she defends by saying that not writing these scenes in media is pretending it it doesn't exist in real life. So, that sounds like a lot of internalized misogyny to me & it really comes across in her writing.) This book was marketed as a narrative that would turn the gender plague trope on its head but I don't believe that the author succeeded in subverting a single thing about it. Beyond that, the writing was just bad. It's the literary equivalent of movies like Human Centipede which have no cinematic value and only want to shock, disgust, and upset the viewer. The authors desire to upset the reader overwhelms anything else she might have to say about...anything. As such, it seems that plotting was planned around specifically horrible things that the author wanted to describe but that don't actually make any sense in respect to the narrative.

I, frankly, can't believe this book was published. It's bad from a technical standpoint. The writing, pacing, plotting, and character development are all over the place. The horror serves no purpose to the plot & the author seems to be seeking up upset, overwhelm, or disgust the reader. But's it's also bad from the standpoint that it relies on & perpetuates negative stereotypes about marginalized communities that already suffer a lot of harm & hate. I think we can do better in 2022.

Please check the content warning. I tried to tag literally everything I could for readers who might struggle with the graphic nature of the book.

Content Warnings

jaimc's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark 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

3.75

This book is like a feral animal caught in a trap.

It lashes out violently at every subject it touches: trans women, cis women, terfs, men, sexism, fatness, ugliness, the unfairness of life. But all this is in service of developing deeply wounded characters. No one exists in this world without deep shame and anger. The trans protagonists reflect on their bodies and identities with unfiltered cruelty that is often difficult to read.

While I suspect some trans readers will find this raw vulnerability cathartic, I imagine it will be deeply triggering for others. And that's before we even get to the grossness of the splatter-punk gore.

This book will not be for everyone. It boomerangs from brutal violence, to dark humor, to genuinely heartbreaking reflection, to camp, to eroticism, back around to violence. But, it's an interesting read if you have the stomach for it.

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machinations's review against another edition

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adventurous dark 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

5.0

Hell yes. Cried at the end. Much smarter people than will have more interesting words to say about Manhunt, but I think one of the biggest things that stood out to me was that this is one of the few books I’ve ever read where each sentence is beautifully, horrifically crafted; whole stories within sentences.

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ollie_again's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

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

4.0

It wasn't the few who'd cheered that frightened her; it was the rest, watching with guarded expressions, not looking at those among their number who cried Go back to Maryland, you fucking Nazis and Fuck TERFs! The women who looked at each other in a way Beth didn't understand, a way sealed forever with the cold and rigid bounds of cisness but which nonetheless told her without room for doubt that they couldn't leave too soon.
That was what scared her.
The women who stayed silent.

Incredibly campy and grotesque. I don't read much horror and even less of gore, I somehow couldn't keep my hands off of this book though. Pretty much everything bad and worse happens and with each chapter, I couldn't believe there would be more to come. And there was.

When I picked this up I thought I knew what I'm going to get, TERFs are the main villains and our main characters are trans folks. I thought I knew what the book will do. Well... not really, you get all the obvious with it: the violence against trans people, body dysmorphia, rampant verbal attacks and TERF rhetoric. But what the author managed to do with all these things, how fucked up it all really gets... in all directions, my brain couldn't keep up. The legacy of Mary Shelley lives on and the question of who is the real monster has always the very same answer. Layers upon layers of proof that people, with the same ideologies, opinions like those living and breathing among us in real life, are much more terrifying than anything else. Everything's all-to-familiar.

And at the same time as the cover (which is absolute perfection) suggests this book is also incredibly funny. Not appropriate humour maybe, but funny nevertheless. Chuckle through the pain.

I'd give this book full five stars if not for the overall ending, that was a bit underwhelming for me. Regardless of that, I'll be on the lookout for another book by Gretchen Felker-Martin even if it's not my typical genre.

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