Reviews tagging 'Rape'

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe

5 reviews

alliereads_'s review against another edition

dark informative

2.5

I really struggled to see how each story fit in with each others or with any overarching theme of true crime. The first chapter felt more like a historical lesson on forensics than a story about a woman obsessed with acting as a detective in a singular compelling case. This continues into the third and fourth parts with diatribes on immigration and Ayn Rand; neither were uninteresting or unimportant to me, but were not even close to what I would expect from a book labeled to be about true crime and the predominantly female obsession with it. 

Everything feels so disjointed; jumping within each chapter from character to character and story to story without ever drawing a clear thread between them. 

I also wasn’t expected so much of the book, within chapters dedicated to specific women, to be anecdotal to Monroe’s life. While she was clearly influenced to write this book because of her relationship to true crime, I was disappointed that all of the reflection didn’t lead her to a thesis on its impact by the end. It wasn’t until the end of part four, where Monroe self-reflected on her part in the true crime community and on mean world syndrome, that I felt like the book had any purpose. 

I would describe this book more as personal essay-meets-historical nonfiction than I would as an exploration of the true crime genre. Not a bad read necessarily, but incredibly different than how it was marketed. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder and Mass/school shootings

Moderate: Rape

kemrick19's review against another edition

dark informative reflective fast-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Blood, Gun violence, Violence, Mass/school shootings, Torture, Death, and Suicide

Minor: Sexual violence, Gore, Mental illness, and Rape

mfrisk's review against another edition

dark informative reflective slow-paced

2.75

I thought the premise of this book was interesting as someone who consumes true crime content and is working to learn to also be more critical of what I consume especially in this vein over time. That being said, the stories chosen I think were interesting to learn more about though I felt in their own chapters the lessons were a bit too neatly wrapped up and decided and the ending felt similarly too wrapped up and decided despite noting that there are shades of grey in these situations. I didn’t really enjoy much of the author’s commentary as I felt she often missed the mark and saw herself as above others who consume true crime content while also being incredibly overly empathetic towards Columbiners of all those highlighted in this book. While there were some interesting points made I felt this book missed the mark in the pacing and balance of the commentary and story aspects of this book and because of this the points made felt at times contradictory and at others not fully thought out. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Toxic friendship, Kidnapping, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Murder, Toxic relationship, Mass/school shootings, Gore, Sexual assault, and Blood

Minor: Antisemitism, Racism, and Bullying

msmse's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

I really loved this book overall. Monroe did a great job providing a riveting, well-rounded description of the obsessions of these women, their motives, and the overall anxieties of society that were at play. It was hard to put the book down! My only negative feedback was that it   broached a lot of topics at the expense of depth. Maybe that was part of the point, though - that women’s interest in crime is as complex and complicated as the cases they follow or experience more directly.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Sexual violence, Violence, and Gun violence

Moderate: Suicide

Minor: Rape

abbystevenson's review against another edition

dark informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Grief, Gun violence, Mass/school shootings, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, and Violence

Minor: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Confinement, Hate crime, Islamophobia, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence