Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

28 reviews

nad_books623's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

I overall I enjoyed the story but I did not like how it was organized and something felt like it was missing from the story.

I do like how the mother daughter relationship was portrayed and the main characters inner turmoil

I kept getting confused because, she didn't tell everything in order. Especially, with the people she had relationships with or that she was obsessing over was not in order in how they were brought up, which confused me.

Also, I did not like how before, during, and after treatment had different types of pacing. During her treatment it seemed to flow, but after it seemed a little choppy because, of how the flow was before. At least in my brain it would make sense if the after was a part 2 or if the Midwest portion was written in a different flow. On the flip side the erratic writing style (at least in my brain) could also make sense to how overall the main character was all over her place.

This is the first time I thought this, but I think the title of this novel perfectly capitulates the entire story and the main character as a person.

Throughout the entire novel the main character struggles mainly with the relationship with her mother. She never felt like she was enough and tried to seek what was empty inside her with other people. It was an endless cycle that was hard for her to disrupt and had to consciously stop herself. Something I did notice is that Karim was not mentioned much and there was no explanation about why. For example, her father wasn't mentioned much, but it made sense with how their relationship was described. I did like how there was like a chapter within a chapter towards the end of each chapter. 

As someone who is bisexual I did like how the character's bisexuality was written and how biphobia was mentioned without it being too subtle. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Biphobia, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Racism, Abandonment, Addiction, Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Mental illness, and Sexual content

Moderate: Xenophobia and Physical abuse

Minor: War, Religious bigotry, Classism, Death, and Misogyny

spookytaco's review against another edition

challenging emotional sad medium-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Biphobia, Emotional abuse, Bullying, and Grief

Moderate: Alcohol, Sexual content, Child abuse, Colonisation, Lesbophobia, and Toxic relationship

hellichipmunk's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective tense slow-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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting, Biphobia, Addiction, Colonisation, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Mental illness, Toxic relationship, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Sexism, Body shaming, Homophobia, Alcohol, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Genocide, Grief, Islamophobia, and Lesbophobia

hstcrow's review against another edition

emotional tense medium-paced

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

2.5

I understand the main character’s central story is about her complicated relationships and many of them, but I felt we were really jumping around a lot between her love interests, especially towards the end, and it felt unrealistic and unnecessarily confusing. The best parts were her learning about her past trauma, her relationships with her family members and cultural history, but those were focussed on the least. Felt a bit unfinished in a few ways. Her dad is mentioned a lot, but honestly we don’t really know anything about him, and he sporadically comes into the story only to have that plot point dropped and then never explained. Maybe that’s meant to be reflective of her actual relationship with her dad, but it felt incomplete as a book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Biphobia, Body shaming, Child abuse, Homophobia, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Eating disorder

pallasreads's review against another edition

challenging emotional medium-paced

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

3.75

This is a really dynamic exploration of identity, abusive parenting, and recovery that fell apart a bit in the last 30 pages. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse and Biphobia

Moderate: Alcoholism, Islamophobia, and Addiction

Minor: Death

throwback682's review against another edition

emotional slow-paced

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

3.75

A bisexual Palestinian American codependent woman acts out her relationship with her abusive mother against various romantic partners. 

This book seemed to drag and then ended pretty abruptly. I didn’t really care about the protagonist; she wasn’t very sympathetic. But maybe she’s too much like me, I don’t know. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Alcoholism, Biphobia, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, and Stalking

Moderate: Child abuse, Drug abuse, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, War, and Genocide

Emotional and physical abuse within families, cheating

savvylit's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.5

This is a novel about healing. Healing from generational trauma. From abuse. From love addiction. From disordered eating. From toxic relationships. The unnamed protagonist of You Exist Too Much is a realistically complicated and messy person. Throughout this novel, she consistently makes mistakes as she tries to sort out who she is and what she wants - all while fighting deep-seated childhood trauma.

You Exist Too Much is a character-driven coming-of-age story with a whole lot of heart. The biggest strength of this book is its portrayal of the difficulties in overcoming harmful patterns. Healing oneself doesn't happen immediately. Rather, it's a slow and effortful process for our protagonist (and for many of us in real life).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Lesbophobia, Child abuse, Infidelity, Eating disorder, Toxic relationship, Addiction, Emotional abuse, and Biphobia

sarahbearas's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.0

This book made me feel a lot of things - compassion, anxiety, sympathy, despair - but ultimately I felt a bit empty at the end. Maybe I just need to sit with this book for longer, synthesize the story more in order to come to a more complete understanding. And confession: I got about 200 pages in and then realized I was not reading a memoir. I don’t even know how to explain myself. But here’s what I will say: As a queer woman myself my God, some parts of the story just made me want to take a walk around the block (in a good way - Arafat is a very compelling author). I think the book does a good job in tackling the complexity of addiction, of our habits and defenses, and how it's rooted in our upbringing. How the cycle of self destruction is perpetuated and the effort it takes in order to break it. By the very nature of the topics at hand, the story is cyclical, and I will go as far as to say it's repetitive. The last hundred or so pages I was feeling like it was a slog. I just wish there was more urgency as it felt there was the first 80%. It felt too long and too quick all at once (the last 20% I mean). 

Again, having just finished this recently, I think my feelings will change a little bit the more I sit and digest this. I think even with my dissatisfaction with the last bit of the book, I think it's still a very good read. The narrator feels very close to the reader, and I was very invested in the journey she took. 

Solid 3 from me!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Eating disorder, and Child abuse

Minor: Self harm

abitbetterbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Toxic friendship, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Alcohol, Sexual content, Biphobia, and Colonisation

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Islamophobia, Mental illness, Racism, Violence, and Self harm

aurora9's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• 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

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Eating disorder, Biphobia, Child abuse, Addiction, Cursing, Sexual content, Homophobia, and Toxic relationship