Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

The Deep by Nick Cutter

26 reviews

szyca's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Gore, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Fatphobia, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Self harm, Torture, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Death, Emotional abuse, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, Violence, Gaslighting, Incest, Mental illness, and Pandemic/Epidemic

shetland_pone's review against another edition

challenging dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

This was really good and terrifying until somewhere close to the end where it crossed the line into so absurd it's literally hilarious. Like I don't even know what to say. At some point, maybe around 75%, I've honestly forgotten, it just started to go off the rails.

• Clayton's hand falling off like a lizard's tail and groping Luke.
• That moment when the scientist guy described his raging boner and mentioned how even his kinky ex couldn't make him that hard.
• The hand then sprouting another 7 hands and then spider scuttling over to a keypad and opening a door.
• Pretty much everything involving the bees.
• Clayton having an Einstein poster to cover up the hole.
• Luke dragging Clayton's unconscious body through a tunnel while being chased by a giant maggot with the heads of his mother, ex-wife, and missing son.
• Toy basically being flattened by the research station and 8 miles worth of water, except slowly.
• The two dogs being fused together and sucked through a supernatural sparkly goo hole while Luke cried his eyes out.

I literally just laughed at these moments.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, and Body horror

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Incest, Sexual assault, Pedophilia, Rape, and Sexual violence

dezaraemd's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

This was the most gripping, intense, horrifying book I have ever read. Well done, Nick Cutter.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic, Animal cruelty, Death, Body horror, Gore, Confinement, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Animal death, and Cursing

Moderate: Body shaming, Eating disorder, Gaslighting, Death of parent, Blood, Domestic abuse, Fatphobia, Grief, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Minor: Sexual content, Abandonment, Sexual assault, Child abuse, Incest, and Kidnapping

jesshorn10's review against another edition

5.0

 This book was so good! The way the author built tension throughout the story was very well done, and there were lots of scenes that genuinely creeped me out. The twists were unexpected, and the imagery was horrifying at times. Parts of the story reminded me of IT and The Shining in the best possible ways. I loved this!

Check content warnings though! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Incest, Sexual assault, Violence, Animal cruelty, Domestic abuse, Animal death, Confinement, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Fatphobia, Body horror, Emotional abuse, Blood, Child death, and Eating disorder

hannanni41's review against another edition

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? It's complicated

2.5

I really wanted to love this book. The description of the book made it seem like exactly my kind of thing: a mysterious evil lurking in an underwater lab that's 8 miles below the surface in the Marianas Trench. I had seen comparisons with The Abyss, The Shining, Alien, Sphere, Event Horizon, and Solaris. 

Unfortunately the story has absolutely zero slow burn and cranks up to an 11 almost immediately (and stays insane the whole time with no regard for pacing) and it felt like it was mostly just flashbacks and rarely creepy underwater lab.

Flashbacks to the protagonist's awful, abusive childhood with his evil fat, super fat (did I mention she's fat? The author takes every opportunity he can to remind us) mom. Flashbacks to tell us more about his sociopath scientist brother that we're supposed to care about saving. More flashbacks to the protagonist's son being kidnapped and his marriage falling apart. Other people describing their flashbacks to the protag or him reading about their flashbacks in journals. Flashbacks!

There are a few genuinely good moments that unnerved me, like

the stuff with the bees

, but not enough. Most of the parts that were supposed to be scary either felt like an exercise in how much misery the author could put the characters through or were derivative of the (much) better works this book gets compared to. The inciting incident of the nonsense pandemic doesn't even end up mattering to the story. It just gets shoved to the side with all the other nonsense plot points.

Also, there is so much description and talk about a millipede incident. It goes on for so long that it stops being scary and is just really gross. Please stop talking about the millipede.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gore, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Child abuse, and Fatphobia

Moderate: Eating disorder, Incest, Child death, and Domestic abuse

papercrowns's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

I really enjoyed The Troop—I gave it five stars—and I remember picking that one up because of the praise it received and how many of my fave booktubers said it was super disturbing. 

Well, I don't remember too many specifics about The Troop (my memory's fault, not the book's), but I do recall thinking it was awesome and gross, but not super disturbing per se. Well, The Deep was certainly disturbing. But, I understand why The Troop is the Nick Cutter book people talk about most, because while The Deep does what it says on the tin in terms of the horror, it's got its problems. 

• An overuse of onomatopoeia to the point of distraction.
• The story touches on a lot of serious, uncomfortable topics, and they certainly gave me the ick but for the most part, these serve the story and felt intentional. However, there was some fatphobia that didn't quite feel necessary or serve the story that I could have done without. It was very like
  "Ooh, she got fat, gross! We know she's gonna be a baddie!"
• The general dialogue was fine, but when it came to banter, it felt a bit forced and unintentionally cringe, particularly between the main character and his brother. 
• The 'Gets, the worldwide pandemic that instigates the whole narrative, was super interesting but is largely forgotten once we get to the underwater lab in the Challenger Deep. It was such an interesting concept that it would have been great to see it have more impact to the story rather than being a throwaway plot device. 

These things brought it down to a 4-star read for me, but none of them derailed the story. It's a real wild ride and intensely unsettling; exactly what I want from a horror book. Nick Cutter excels in describing horrifying, uncomfortable, and balls-to-the-wall cuckoo-bananas situations. 

His descriptions of the characters' psychological trauma as they grapple with desperate situations are so intense and unnerving; I often found myself wanting to put the book down to give myself a break but also being absolutely unable to tear my eyes from the page. There was one claustrophobic sequence in particular where Cutter describes

the main characters crawling through an access tunnel that gets narrower and narrower with no guarantee that they'll be able to get out at the other end

. Ooof, my skin was crawling, my heart was racing, and I almost threw the book across the room in vicarious panic. 

And frankly, that's some chef's-kiss horror writing if you ask me. 

I can't wait to read more Nick Cutter, cuz I know it'll be a grand creep-fest that does exactly what it says on the tin. However, I will say that I'd love to see a bit more character diversity, particularly more women.

Worth checking the trigger warnings before reading if you have triggers. Definitely do not read if bad things happening to animals in your reading is a dealbreaker. 😬

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Animal death, Blood, Animal cruelty, Gore, Grief, Self harm, Body horror, Confinement, Death, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Medical content, Excrement, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, Incest, Child abuse, Fatphobia, and Eating disorder

Minor: Death of parent and Sexual assault

apolloniablooms's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

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

2.5

Like a lot of horror/thrillers this book suffers from hitting the peak amount of tenseness a person can feel really early on and then maintaining it instead of giving the reader relief then building tension again.  By the end I was skimming.  Bad guy is bad because of mental illness. Wish it had been a short story.  Would be a good premise for a video game.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting, Gore, Kidnapping, Medical content, Death, Mental illness, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Animal cruelty, Child death, Confinement, Self harm, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Bullying, Grief, Torture, Stalking, Suicide, Panic attacks/disorders, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Vomit, Terminal illness, Animal death, Physical abuse, Murder, Blood, and Body horror

finleyfrogreads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Gaslighting, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Gore, Confinement, Death, Cursing, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Self harm

Moderate: Blood, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Kidnapping, Medical content, Mental illness, Rape, Excrement, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Adult/minor relationship, Incest, Murder, Sexual assault, and Vomit

reaja's review against another edition

dark tense slow-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

2.0

This book was brutally slow paced for the tension it was trying to build. Copious overlapping and unnecessary plots threads that never really paid off. It spends a good half of the pages in childhood flashbacks. The main character isn't particularly sympathetic despite the massive number of pages dedicated to his trauma. He's just sorta... there. The only sympathetic character in the whole novel is the dog. It still gets a full two stars because the way this author writes in-the-moment horror scenes is really, honestly, scary. I feel like this book needed a really talented editor who wasn't afraid to tell this guy to seriously pare down his manuscript. It should have been a short story or he should have leaned WAY harder into character development on the station. Alice and Clayton were especially flat when they both could have been great characters. Alas, very disappointing, but suitably spooky if you're willing to dump a ton of hours in for a few golden glimmers of damn good horror writing. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Death, Self harm, Violence, Child abuse, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child death, Animal death, and Grief

Minor: Kidnapping, Pedophilia, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Excrement, Incest, Medical content, Physical abuse, and Death of parent

alycatlovesbooks's review

challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Body shaming, Incest, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Animal death, Blood, Child abuse, Fatphobia, Gaslighting, Gore, Pedophilia, Death, and Domestic abuse