Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Death in Her Hands

Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

21 reviews

jude333's review against another edition

I just couldn’t deal with the writing style. The long paragraphs about seemingly nothing just couldn’t capture my interest. I understand that it’s more to show her thought process, but things like that almost every 3 pages just killed me. I can (kind of) deal with an unlikable character, but this was extensive. I need SOMETHING that keeps me wanting to continue spending my time reading about them, and everything was just so awful.

Also the fat phobia was just too much to handle. These awful view points and long rants about these “fat women” did nothing to explore the character for me. It just showed how awful she was, which I was already EXTREMELY aware of. I understand that the point of her character is that she’s completely delusional, but I can only read about delusion so much before I start to discount every word and then it feels like I’m just wasting my time.

I will say, I did have an interest in her relationship with her husband, and that might have kept me going, but there was just so much noise around it that it wasn’t enough. I was reading on a kindle, but then I switched to the audiobook (which honestly did help a little), but I found myself continuously looking at the progress bar to see how much time I had left, and I didn’t want to force myself into a reading slump because of this book.

All in all, I see how some people could carry on with it, but it’s just not for me.

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joensign's review against another edition

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dark mysterious 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

3.0

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oliviah1111's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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? Yes

4.0

this book is very very slow paced. from what i understand, it was only over the span of 2-3 days. i enjoyed it either way, but there are some weird elements i didnt like.

there was random hints of fatphobia, and what kind of felt like fetishization of foreign women. this may be because of the narrator being an older woman, but it seemed to be the writers opinion sneaking through especially with the weird comments about fat people.

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natalia_booksss's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

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

4.75

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erinbarton's review

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dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

5.0

first tried to read this back in dec 2021, got 50 pages in and gave up because i was bored and worried about going into a reading slump and not reaching my reading goal for the year

over a year later, i gave this another go after reading the rest of moshfegh’s work and enjoying all of them, especially eileen. the timing for giving this another go was just right - i read the whole book in one day and so didn’t mind the slow pace and just allowed myself to get swept up in the character’s inner monologue and imagined mystery.

this was such an interesting read with so many clues peppered throughout. the main character was such an unreliable narrator, while following her “investigation” you also come across more questions of your own, the main one being — how much of this is actually real?

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