Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

246 reviews

heybethrenee's review

challenging dark sad

5.0

My life going forward can be categorized as before Manhunt and after. This book fundamentally changed something within me. I have read queer literature in the past but I have never connected to characters like this. This is such an unflinching depiction of queerness and complicated relationships we have with ourselves and our community. Wow wow wow the characters in this are everything to me, they are flawed and fucked up and selfish and would do anything for each other. The last hundred pages of this book are a wild zombie dystopian ride and I loved every heartbreaking moment of it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Hate crime, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Cannibalism, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

carokv's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Cursing, Death, Fatphobia, Gore, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Transphobia, Blood, Grief, Cannibalism, Murder, Outing, and Dysphoria

chasehoffman's review against another edition

challenging dark informative mysterious reflective tense slow-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? It's complicated

3.25

the sex scenes written like body horror were a bit too frequent for my personal tastes, but the story was compelling enough for me to push through

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Grief, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

melanied927's review

challenging dark sad tense fast-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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Bullying, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infertility, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Murder, Pregnancy, Outing, Dysphoria, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

abodoran's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

75% of this book I found to be ok- which isn't meant as a negative because not everything has to be a masterpiece to be enjoyable. I think I personally struggled with some of the because it depicted things that I also struggle with (transphobia and dysphoria). The last 25% of this book, though, managed to obliterate all of my dissatisfaction as well as rip out my heart at the same time.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Transphobia, Violence, and War

Moderate: Deadnaming, Rape, and Sexual assault

Minor: Alcohol

daphneisbooked's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny fast-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? It's complicated

5.0

Excellent variety of trans and queer characters

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore and Sexual assault

surprisebear's review against another edition

I slogged through as much as I could, thinking I just wasn't used to horror writing. It's my least read genre. I decided to quit after I read the reviews, and even the positive reviews commented on the gruesome, gory writing. Definitely not for me, especially with the whiplash between scenes that are incredibly horny, and scenes that were the grossest, most wretched things I've ever read. Maybe there's something meaningful about gender that could be found, but I'm not willing to dig through the viscera for it

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Hate crime, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Cannibalism, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

argonautical's review

dark slow-paced

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

0.5

This book wouldn’t know subtlety if it was beat over the head with it. The concept was solid so I stuck through it in hopes that maybe it would get better but I really should’ve called it quits after the first 20 pages.

There’s such a reliance on shock value that in the end nothing is shocking because you’re just numb to everything going on. A cycle of one gruesome thing happening and moving on to the next while waiting for some semblance of a plot to appear and it never does. Simultaneously the book thinks it’s so clever with its inclusion of modern gender politics into its post-apocalyptic dystopia but you can’t be clever when everything is presented at face value, no nuance to any characters, no depth, just a shallow portrayal of gender in which the villains of the book are caricatured in how one-dimensional their ideals are (there seriously wasn’t anything more creative to call them than TERFs? That is what they are but cmon, you had free rein to unleash creativity, call them anything, anything at all, and you chose the default option, in this a fictional world in which internet-origin lingo is gonna stick out like a sore thumb as feeling incredibly out of place).

There’s no commentary of value added by the author on the themes (if we can even call surface-level discussion that) she chose to include so it serves only as a preach to the choir instead of allowing any delving into what we could understand about our society’s treatment of trans people and gender identity as a whole through the lens of this world she created. An opportunity to say something of value absolutely wasted.

The blurb labels it horror while the acknowledgements labels it splattercore. It fails at horror given the thematics are so surface-level and shock-value driven with the same cheap shocks cycled over and over that it’s impossible to feel anything but bored. Despite the prevalence of violence it fails to be splattercore either because, again, I feel nothing. It’s like the author thinks just including various traumas inherently creates horror or dread but completely forgets how important it is to add a coherent story to the mix so that readers actually have something to care about. “This thing happened and then this thing happened” is not a compelling story.

There is no development to any character, and we learn very little about any of them. And yet instead of a plot we spend the whole time following random events involving these characters we don’t know enough about to care for, often in a confusing fashion of sudden perspective changes without proper indication of who we’re following now. All wrapped up in run on sentences and cluttered paragraphs that often make it a chore to parse what’s being written.

I spent 20¢ on this book secondhand and that was still too much.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Deadnaming, Death, Drug use, Fatphobia, Gore, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Transphobia, Blood, Cannibalism, Dysphoria, and Pandemic/Epidemic

jojothefool's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional 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

4.25

I really enjoyed this novel and had so much fun listening to it. I’m not a huge apocalyptic genre fan or like war heavy stuff so some parts of this were rough to get through or just not my cup of tea, but this will definitely stick with me for a while and I did enjoy myself. Heed the trigger warnings!!!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Murder, Dysphoria, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Confinement, Drug use, Fatphobia, Infertility, Self harm, Toxic relationship, Pregnancy, and Gaslighting

bakquoia's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense fast-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

Perfect.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault, and Transphobia

Moderate: Cannibalism

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