Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

19 reviews

katreena's review against another edition

2.5

I feel like the story was very loose and not well put together. Also my my genre so maybe in bias. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Body horror, Body shaming, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Incest, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Lesbophobia, Outing, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

savazelena's review

dark emotional funny tense fast-paced

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

5.0

Feels like it was written for me personally.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body shaming, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Fatphobia, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Outing, Dysphoria, War, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Cancer, Domestic abuse, and Death of parent

yodisborg's review

challenging dark funny tense medium-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? Yes

3.5

Tense thriller that grips you by the balls and doesn’t let go. Compelling characters that you root for let down by a poorly plotted ending.  Writing is effective and clean for the most part but interjected with poor pop culture references or unnatural crass language that discordant with the rest of the writing

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Rape, Transphobia, and Violence

jp_riemersma's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective tense fast-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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Biphobia, Body horror, Body shaming, Deadnaming, Death, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Medical content, Mass/school shootings, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Murder, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, Dysphoria, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

sydneynorman's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infertility, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Murder, Pregnancy, Outing, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, Dysphoria, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Self harm, Death of parent, and Alcohol

Minor: Deadnaming

books_24's review against another edition

Absolute garbage 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Deadnaming, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, and Dysphoria

kys_chai_and_books's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense fast-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Deadnaming, Death, Domestic abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Murder, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, Dysphoria, and Pandemic/Epidemic

smbd_the_reader's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

5.0

Some words upfront.

This book is very much over-the-top, spatterpunk-esque and horny and the author is well known to be a drama queen with more vile takes than one person should reasonably be capable of having.

As such, I cannot recommend reading this book to everyone and cannot really recommend buying it to, well, anyone.

If you want to read it and have any triggers whatsoever I'd recommend looking up a list (or several) first. This review contains mentions of rape and TERf rhetoric but nothing overly detailed.


That being said, I genuinely enjoyed this book.

I loved the complexity of the characters, the varying responses to trauma, the way different trans people were treated by their surroundings, the inner thoughts of the characters, internalized transphobia and all.

Gretchen-Felker is also absolutely amazing at writing gripping storylines and visceral imagery that completely entrance you, rarely has a book had this much of an emotional impact on me while reading.



The TERFs were very close to real life, minus the force of a society that would not approve of their more extreme antics. There’s a hint of exaggeration at times, though a lot of it is taken fairly directly from actual TERF talking points.

Which may seem unrealistic and over the top to some but really, that’s just TERFs, baby.
One thing that had me sort of taken aback was

TERFs willingly adding boys into their militia, so long as they rejected their identities, let themselves be sterilized and so on. It fits with the hypocrisy and the need for violent domination of others, but generally TERFs are very bioessentialist about sex and gender and can get extremely violent about their disdain for anyone who’s AMAB so that was a little odd.

What was not odd to me in the slightest is the attempted rape of Fran with the TERF in question then freaking out when she realized Fran has a penis and trying to paint herself as a victim. It’s so extremely on-brand that I almost had to laugh, in that “god they sure would, wouldn’t they?” way.


Overall the one thing that I'm not sure how to feel about is the ending. A lot of things were building up to, at best, a Pyrrhic victory at that point and while I am glad that so many survived there seemed to be some degree of plot armor involved which makes it at least somewhat less satisfying.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Genocide, Hate crime, Sexism, Transphobia, Violence, Medical content, Religious bigotry, and Dysphoria

klwilby's review

dark 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? Yes

5.0

Dark, gruesome, and unflinching. I don’t read much horror but I could not put this book down. There was beautifully, brutally complex relationships throughout — I will say I would’ve loved to spend even more time with the three main characters, particularly Robbie. I’ll also say that I was surprised to see so many negative reviews of this book. It seems many readers violently missed the point of this book, or simply find depictions of queer bodies and intimacy to be inherently more graphic than cishet bodies and intimacy. Don’t let that stop you from picking this (admittedly bloody) gem. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Deadnaming, Death, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Violence, Police brutality, Trafficking, Grief, Cannibalism, Outing, War, and Injury/Injury detail

bites_of_books's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.25

An apocalypse book where a virus is triggered in people who have higher levels of testosterone, causing them to become feral beasts.

This is a book where the author has zero sympathy for the reader, they describe everything in raw and gory detail and hold back nothing. The atmosphere is rich in the toxic nature of the characters and also the general anxiety that it is to live in a world where various groups of people are trying to survive. We follow Fran and Beth, two trans women who are trying to survive in a world where they hunt men who have turned feral in order to harvest their organs for selling and also to acquire the hormones they need to avoid turning into these feral beasts. To top that, they also need to be wary of a group of TERFs who are building an army, trying to be the new law of the land. 

I highly encourage you to read and listen to trans reviewers since a lot of the book is from that perspective. Trans experiences are not represented in literature enough and even less in horror so this book is highly valuable because it does put those experiences front and center. 

The overall plot of the book jumped around a bit too much for my liking, it seemed like the first half of the book was about one thing while the second half focused on something completely different. While our main characters arcs do take precedence, there were a couple of other characters that came in and out of the story never fully solidifying their connection to the main characters.

I'd highly recommend checking all the content warnings, if you do want to venture into this book. I'd say that if you like apocalypse stories with a completely different perspective, full of gore that doesn't hold back, this might be the book for you. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infertility, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Antisemitism, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, Outing, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, Dysphoria, War, and Injury/Injury detail