Reviews with content warning for Self harm - The Betrayals

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The Betrayals by Bridget Collins

6 reviews

shaylac's review

challenging dark mysterious reflective sad 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

TLDR: the writing style is slower paced with 3 character perspectives that navigate Monteverre with flashbacks from 10 years previous. There are points in the book that are interesting and will keep your attention but there are other points where you're confused as to why the event makes sense in the storyline.

To start off, I was excited to read this book just by the description it seemed like the book was going to be about adventure, love, and mystery. However, as I was reading, it was slow-paced with no world building or character building.

The entire book is based around the grand jeu but it was never explained how it was played or what is involved with making a grand jeu. I felt that I was left confused half the time trying to figure out who the characters were and how they fit into the story. With that, there were 3 different perspectives which "The Rat" would not have been missed if their perspective wasn't written.

It seemed like there wasn't enough thought put into writing the storyline and how the book would have ultimately ended.

Content Warnings

jessiereads98's review

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mysterious 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

TL;DR: The Betrayals is a poorly crafted, offensive Christian persecution fantasy featuring multiple other discriminatory stances that wants to be taken seriously as a literary work, but has nothing to say.

The Betrayals’ merits begin and end with a gorgeous cover. There is somehow both a lot and nothing going on here. Crucial elements are vague for the sake of vagueness, so much of the book both in major and minor elements is offensive, and the craft itself isn’t even particularly well done.

According to the blurb, The Betrayals centres around the grand jeu. The national game (or not a game, or a performance, or a religion, take your pick honestly) of some European nation (that is not France or Britain or Switzerland but deliberately not disclosed for some reason). The grand jeu is clearly made intentionally vague so the reader can never actually get a handle on what it is, how it is played, or what elements really make it up. This vagueness truly serves no purpose in the story or for the themes of the book. The author is also intentionally vague about what country this is taking place in, what time period it takes place in, and the details of the ruling political party. I believe this was an attempt to demonstrate that fascism can happen anywhere at anytime, but ultimately it is not effective and just leaves things feeling confused and hollow.

This book is also wildly offensive with absolutely no hint to what the reader is in for in the back cover description. This book is actually less about the grand jeu and more about the ruling political party’s oppression of Christians. The Christian oppression complex is weird and disgusting in and of itself, but Bridget Collins succeeds in making it worse. Collins has essentially recreated pre-Holocaust/World War II Nazi Germany and substituted Christians for Jewish people in her ahistorical fantasy world. Collins goes out of her way to inform us that the ruling party in the book came to power by gaining the support of the working class through blaming the country’s struggles on communists and Christians. In this reimagining of history Christians are marked with a cross on their clothing, put on a registry which requires special papers, and secretly rounded up by police then left in a hostile area. There was no creativity here, just a disgustingly antisemitic warping of history to satisfy the bizarre Christian desire to be oppressed. As if this wasn’t enough, Christians are lumped in with Muslims and Jewish people, who are actually oppressed (pages 51 and 78). The author also uses the slur g*psy (derogatory term for Romani people) and maligns their beliefs (page 183) for no real reason with nothing else done to combat that behaviour in the text.

The misogyny in this book both of the time period (which isn’t even specified but implied to be historical) and the characters goes completely unchallenged. Women are repeatedly maligned as less than the men, stupider, more frivolous, overly sensitive, petty. The two main female characters (Magister Ludi Claire Dryden, and The Rat) are almost never referred to by their names but rather their titles. Their supposed differences from other women are also repeatedly pointed out. The result is two dehumanized “not like other girls” caricatures who exist solely to further the development of male characters’ stories (Léo and Claire, Simon and The Rat).

The twist of Claire being the Carfax that Léo knew was predictable and boring. It diminished Léo’s previous relationship with Carfax, his current relationship with Claire, and the significance of Carfax’s death. In conjunction with the rest of the book it also came off as both transphobic and homophobic, whether that was the intention or not. Earlier in the book there is a seemingly throwaway line about an irrelevant side character who dresses in typically male clothing. It is said that, “she’d rather be an honorary man than speak up for women” (page 203). This is the exact attitude that TERFs hold towards trans men and trans masculine people. TERFs believe, that just as is portrayed in this book through Claire/Carfax, that trans men are really women pretending to be men due to not wanting to be disadvantaged under patriarchy. This story seems to play into that belief, and taken in conjunction with the Christian persecution fantasy it entertains, I’m not inclined to give the author the benefit of the doubt. In addition, the story gains little to nothing by retconning the queer relationship between Carfax and Léo other than getting to bury its gays. While there is less explicitly homophobic in this story, eliminating the only queer relationship retroactively once again does not look good in combination with everything else going on in this book.

The least of Bridget Collins’ sins in The Betrayals is the craft, however it also does not hold up under scrutiny. Bridget Collins clearly intended to write a Very Serious Literary Work with Something To Say. Ultimately what she created is something that can’t be taken seriously and has nothing to say. She is vague just for the sake of vagueness, it doesn’t accomplish anything. The character of The Rat seems to serve little purpose to the story. The character’s main function seems to be an attempt to shock readers through grossness and light body horror to enhance the impression of this as a serious literary work. The Rat’s secondary function is to further the Christian persecution narrative through her interactions with Simon, but that is irrelevant to the main plot of Claire/Léo/Carfax. We are also repeatedly told things instead of shown them. Collins just can’t seem to deal in subtleties that would be so much more compelling in this book. She can’t just show us that Léo is is romantically interested in Carfax (although it is obvious), she has to spend two pages telling us that Léo has a crush on Carfax. We are told, seemingly out of nowhere, that Léo loves Claire separately from his memory of Carfax. What led to that? Why are we suddenly being told this when up to that point Claire has been a sort of stand in or surrogate for Carfax in Léo’s mind? It might be shocking for Bridget Collins to find out that readers can, in fact, figure things out on their own and through subtext, and don’t need to be bashed over the head with them. Perhaps, instead of explicitly stating the obvious, she could spend those pages criticizing the disgusting attitudes displayed in this book.

Content Warnings

glammster's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

theirgracegrace's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad 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

2.75

What I liked about the book: the richness of the language and the complicated system of roles and reversals that kept me reading. What I disliked: literally everything else. The attempt at Holocaust imagery is absurd, the love story completely overshadows the setting and the threats, and the characters are completely forgettable and ordinary. The author is also a TERF and you can see it in the way that the final reveal is played out. Honestly want my money back.

Content Warnings

books_and_fairy_lights's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.75

I honestly love Bridget Collins, her (adult) books are truly amazing. The characters are great, the mystery is palpable but not impenetrable, the romance is on point. Didn't see the plot twist coming and yet it feels like I unconsciously knew and that's a great mastery from the writer. I've got to say The Binding remains my favorite but The Betrayals was really good as well. I really loved that I could really get into the story (I don't remember reading a book that size so fast for my pleasure) and see and understand it although it's centered around a completely abstract concept. What I loved the most, however, was everytime I closed the book the atmosphere of Montverre was still present, hanging in the air around me.
It's the type of writing I love, the type of story I love, I cannot wait to read more of Bridget Collins' masterpieces!

Content Warnings

ladymickbeth's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad 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

2.25

The premise of this sounded like I book I would find ideal, but while I was intrigued, I was constantly frustrated, sometimes to the point of anger, at this book. The big plot reveal at the 80% mark made me literally get up from my chair and yell, it was so oddly placed and confusing. This book goes between a “present time” 1930s in an unnamed European country (meant to be France? Somewhere French-speaking? Somewhere where French culture was just copied and borrowed from?) and flashbacks to when the main character was attending the school, told with diary entries. I most looked forward to the diary entries, but I had to keep reminding myself that the narrator was 19-20 at the time of writing and not somewhere between 14 and 17, which is how I personally think the students seemed to act. The side plot with the Rat seemed like such a random addition that it almost felt out of place for most of the story. Also, maybe it’s because I hadn’t read the book this one is based on, but it was so frustrating to me how the Grand Jeu is never properly explained. I didn’t know it had something to do with music until like 20% in, but there’s also some kind of dance involved? Also math?? They say it’s meant to be worship, but they’re never clear on WHAT they are worshipping with the game. I’m good with a sense of mystery, but the whole time I had no grasp on this main piece of the plot.

My main issue, though, is the allusion to Holocaust-style religious prejudice, complete with having to have a symbol on your clothes to indicate you belong to a certain “other” religion — for the most part, this was Christianity. That subplot and its necessity makes NO sense to me and was uncomfortable, especially with it being set just a decade before WWII began (even though there is no confirmation that this story takes place in a universe where that war happens). I was here for the slow burn enemies-to-lovers romance, and the rest of the time I was left reeling about the plot points and character decisions.

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