Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - You Exist Too Much

Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

113 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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frawst_disasta_reads's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-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

I liked the ending of the book more than most of the book. I expected more Bethlehem and Palestine than the US or a 12 Step Addiction Therapy.

Our main character suffers from love addiction. She’s emotionally cheating on her girlfriend. She cheats. Her mother is a Narcissist who can’t accept a daughter who isn’t straight. And overall I kind of wish I hadn’t read this book. But, I am glad to have not DNFd.

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corriejn's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Found it pretty boring. Characters felt fairly flat; I wasn't left caring what happened with any of them.

Some aspects (like the main character's relationship with her mother, or with extended family/culture abroad) felt like they were meant to be a meaningful part of the narrative, but were never developed that much.

Definitely go with a text version of this one if you are going to give it a try-- the Australian audiobook narrator's attempts at (multiple) U.S. accents are distractingly bad.

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codecat's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

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

3.5

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leighr16_'s review against another edition

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It was too “sad girl” esc for me to read honestly, and I also found the plot to be quite flip floppy and all over the place, to the point where it was hard to keep track of the main character’s motives and life situations through out the book!

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oliviapincin's review against another edition

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fast-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

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spookytaco's review against another edition

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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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mayszn's review against another edition

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emotional reflective

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

3.5

she’s the biggest hypocrite ever but she’s just like me

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okayletsread's review against another edition

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challenging reflective medium-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

2.0

Essentially, this was a book about self-sabotage in the form of love addiction through the lens of a queer Palestinian American woman. I liked the flashbacks to the main character's childhood and its connection with her current behaviors, but it focused too much on a long string of love interests and unhealthy, toxic relationships that contributed to her addiction. And the style felt rushed and reminiscent of stream-of-consciousness journal entries from our teenage years. There's not enough in the book that worked for me.

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archiveofrasa's review against another edition

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reflective slow-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

4.0

despite this book not necessarily being a 5-star read for me, I'm really glad I read it. I have this urge to give it a higher rating with every other review I'm seeing at the moment, but I'm sticking to 4 stars.

no matter how unlikable this (unnamed) main character is, she feels so real on the page. she's contradictory, absolutely messy in the sense that if she was gen Z I know her peers would shun her online, and she's in so much unacknowledged pain. she unravels this pain slowly, empathetically that when she starts admitting it bit by bit, I felt this satisfaction growing, even though she continues to be flawed.

maybe it's just me, but whenever she cheated, it wasn't like she was actively justifying it. I feel like a lot of people are implying this, but it's more matter of fact, described like an addiction, which is essentially what it is for this character.

going into this book, I expected to see more vignettes with her mother, but on my annotating reread, I realised her mother was indeed there, just in between the lines. that's ultimately what this book is about: the main character's relationship with her mother and how that's impacted her throughout the questionable choices she makes. the connections this has to her Palestinian roots, diaspora experiences, her sexuality and generally just lack of community, they were so interesting and heartbreaking. reading Arafat's interviews about this book definitely confirmed my thoughts on quite a few aspects of the novel and while there is a lot of subtlety I feel like went over my head, I really enjoyed it!

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