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gloomypanda's review
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Blood, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
Moderate: Death, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual violence, Kidnapping, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal cruelty, Drug use, and Vomit
gia1303's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Drug use, Gore, Mental illness, Violence, Blood, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Alcohol, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Body shaming, Cursing, Rape, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Cannibalism, and Stalking
eisenbuns's review against another edition
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Stalking, Murder, and Toxic friendship
angelkisses's review against another edition
dark
tense
fast-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
stuck between thinking this is a genius critique of white upperclass sensibilities (satirised to the extreme) OR just a dark romance being masked as a "feminist" slasher book (feminist... maeve is... feminist? she's literally an NLOG internalised misogyny rapist). derivative and overtly referential and so ... SO repetitive. we get it, you're a wolf. kate snapping at maeve reminded me of the scene in ruby sparks where the MC runs into his ex at a party and is confronted with his behaviour, which I liked. maeve is an unreliable narrator for sure -- from the end we can see that her own thoughts can even completely overshadow reality. also what happened to the girl who she saw near the dolls? just a red herring that never gets resolved... the hype did fool me. i liked american psycho (the film adaptation -- apologies but i'm not going to read any bret easton ellis lol) and loved spree, a film which has been called "american psycho for the digital age" and I think it captures that essence really well WITHOUT literally being like "omg I'm just like bateman." like yawn. the scenes are already reminiscent of the film (like the scenes where maeve and gideon have sex with others specifically the rape or just her general love of Halloween music) without you stating in capital bold font "I AM BEING INSPIRED BY AMERICAN PSYCHO." we get it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, and Murder
ande_thomas's review
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Maeve Fly is a princess. That is, she is an actress who portrays a popular ice princess at a large, unnamed and—I’m sure—entirely fictional theme park south of Los Angeles. She is also cynical, vulgar, unsympathetic, and struggling to control her violent urges. That’s pretty much all we know at the start of CJ Leede’s debut novel, Maeve Fly.
Even before its release on June 6, Maeve Fly has been building its reputation as a brutal, twisted addition to slasherdom, and we can go ahead and rip that band-aid off right off the bat—it’s a deserving reputation. Leede takes her time in building up to the mayhem, but it’s time well-spent, showing readers what makes Maeve’s brain tick in great detail.
Maeve is refreshingly complex, as far as antiheroes go. She is positively misanthropic, but she loves her job to death, despite it involving day upon day of countless interactions with children and families—a mandatory smile glued to her face. She’s good at it, too. In fact, even her rival and “unofficial” supervisor Liz, has to concede that Maeve, along with her best friend Kate (as the ice princess’s royal sister), garners more positive feedback from visitors than any other princess in the park.
Read more on What Sleeps Beneath!
Thanks to Tor Nightfire for an eARC of Maeve Fly in exchange for an unbiased review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Cursing, Kidnapping, Grief, and Toxic friendship
Minor: Rape, Terminal illness, and Toxic relationship
ladymacbeth_1985's review
dark
sad
fast-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
I received this e-arc from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.
Normally, I have some pithy one-word wrap-up for the book I’m reviewing, but I got nothin' regarding this one. I don’t think you write a book like this expecting everyone to love it, so that’s what’s coming.
The first third of the novel is excellent. The prose is engaging, and I was immediately hooked on the Wednesday-Addams-on-steroids character and mix of dark humour. I wasn’t as keen on the copious descriptions of LA - a city I have never been to and have no desire to visit - but there weren’t too many of them. Maeve was a great balance of demented and understandable. Her life is interesting and intriguing. The author has a fantastic style that is visceral and detailed but moves at a great clip. Honestly, the first third had me hooked.
Unfortunately, I started to lose interest once she started going gah-gah over the guy mentioned in the blurb (it kind of drifts into a Dark Romance at this part), and then the last third just went so off-the-rails and included so much shock value gore it grew tedious. Maeve, in the first third, isn’t a sympathetic character, but she’s at least an interesting weirdo. But when the book got really rapey and torturey and included so many sex scenes (I don't mind sex scenes at all, but I prefer a slow-burn romance), I was no longer invested in her story. The end twist was also very predictable. It's a horror novel, but it's not scary.
Likewise, while Maeve is very intriguing at the start, we never really learn the “why” about a few things. Why does she love her job? Why is she so dependent on Kate’s friendship? I also thought the concept - how she’s a Disney princess during the day but a dark and edgy woman in the evening - wasn’t fleshed out enough to be making any sort of commentary.
If you enjoy really dark novels with lots of gore and sexual content, you will enjoy this (no judgment from me!), but I think I’m done with these edgy books as they seem to be disappointing me as of late. It could be that in my old age, I’ve softened a bit. When I was 21, I probably would have loved this book, but given my nearly four decades on this earth, I’ve seen and read a lot of horrible things, and they no longer shock me but sadden me. There is one particularly gross thing that happens in this novel in the climax that seems like it’s really over-the-top; yet, I read an article about this particular thing happening in real life to a woman while they were being tortured under interrogation. I think because I’ve read about so many awful things in real life, and especially at my old job where I worked in criminal case law, that shock value horror just serves to make me disheartened. Now, if these things were happening in the novel for a social critique or an allegory of a systemic problem in society, it would have worked better for me. But to have these things happen to innocent people, not as a form of justice against someone awful or to make a statement, rubbed me the wrong way. No one who receives violence in this novel deserves it, even remotely so.
As such, a novel about a woman murdering people or harming them in disgusting ways, but with no real “downfall” or “comeuppance” moment (I guess you could argue the ending was such, but I would hardly call that “justice”) makes me wonder who are we to be rooting for in this novel? What is it trying to say? American Psycho, which this has been compared to, was gory too, but it was a comment on corporate culture in comparing the quest for greed and status with homicidal sociopathy. I think the only reason Maeve Fly is being compared to American Psycho (a book I find overblown, by the way) is because she’s someone you wouldn’t expect to be a serial killer, just like Bateman was at the time of publication. Back when American Psycho first came out, part of the resonance behind it was the idea that a serial killer isn’t just some weirdo, but could be someone “successful.” We don’t have that bias anymore.
Another idea I had was that the novel might simply be showing a woman serial killer who is just born bad. This is an increasing trend in media right now that we have women killers or evil women who haven’t been “turned” bad by trauma, but who are just naturally evil. This rise is a response to, perhaps, how many male killers we have in media who haven’t needed to be “corrupted” by anything. Up until recently, there was this latent idea in society that women were inherently good-which is a form of sexism-and having just plain evil women in books and movies today is an attempt to disprove that notion. If that is the purpose of the book, then it definitely hits that mark on that front, though I don’t think that idea is strong enough to carry the entire novel and the torture and rape aspects of it.
I do love things that are subversive and push the envelope but perhaps I just prefer it to be more subtle? As I’ve said, I think the author has definitely talent with their prose and descriptions, so perhaps I’ll check out another of hers in the future.
Normally, I have some pithy one-word wrap-up for the book I’m reviewing, but I got nothin' regarding this one. I don’t think you write a book like this expecting everyone to love it, so that’s what’s coming.
The first third of the novel is excellent. The prose is engaging, and I was immediately hooked on the Wednesday-Addams-on-steroids character and mix of dark humour. I wasn’t as keen on the copious descriptions of LA - a city I have never been to and have no desire to visit - but there weren’t too many of them. Maeve was a great balance of demented and understandable. Her life is interesting and intriguing. The author has a fantastic style that is visceral and detailed but moves at a great clip. Honestly, the first third had me hooked.
Unfortunately, I started to lose interest once she started going gah-gah over the guy mentioned in the blurb (it kind of drifts into a Dark Romance at this part), and then the last third just went so off-the-rails and included so much shock value gore it grew tedious. Maeve, in the first third, isn’t a sympathetic character, but she’s at least an interesting weirdo. But when the book got really rapey and torturey and included so many sex scenes (I don't mind sex scenes at all, but I prefer a slow-burn romance), I was no longer invested in her story. The end twist was also very predictable. It's a horror novel, but it's not scary.
Likewise, while Maeve is very intriguing at the start, we never really learn the “why” about a few things. Why does she love her job? Why is she so dependent on Kate’s friendship? I also thought the concept - how she’s a Disney princess during the day but a dark and edgy woman in the evening - wasn’t fleshed out enough to be making any sort of commentary.
If you enjoy really dark novels with lots of gore and sexual content, you will enjoy this (no judgment from me!), but I think I’m done with these edgy books as they seem to be disappointing me as of late. It could be that in my old age, I’ve softened a bit. When I was 21, I probably would have loved this book, but given my nearly four decades on this earth, I’ve seen and read a lot of horrible things, and they no longer shock me but sadden me. There is one particularly gross thing that happens in this novel in the climax that seems like it’s really over-the-top; yet, I read an article about this particular thing happening in real life to a woman while they were being tortured under interrogation. I think because I’ve read about so many awful things in real life, and especially at my old job where I worked in criminal case law, that shock value horror just serves to make me disheartened. Now, if these things were happening in the novel for a social critique or an allegory of a systemic problem in society, it would have worked better for me. But to have these things happen to innocent people, not as a form of justice against someone awful or to make a statement, rubbed me the wrong way. No one who receives violence in this novel deserves it, even remotely so.
As such, a novel about a woman murdering people or harming them in disgusting ways, but with no real “downfall” or “comeuppance” moment (I guess you could argue the ending was such, but I would hardly call that “justice”) makes me wonder who are we to be rooting for in this novel? What is it trying to say? American Psycho, which this has been compared to, was gory too, but it was a comment on corporate culture in comparing the quest for greed and status with homicidal sociopathy. I think the only reason Maeve Fly is being compared to American Psycho (a book I find overblown, by the way) is because she’s someone you wouldn’t expect to be a serial killer, just like Bateman was at the time of publication. Back when American Psycho first came out, part of the resonance behind it was the idea that a serial killer isn’t just some weirdo, but could be someone “successful.” We don’t have that bias anymore.
Another idea I had was that the novel might simply be showing a woman serial killer who is just born bad. This is an increasing trend in media right now that we have women killers or evil women who haven’t been “turned” bad by trauma, but who are just naturally evil. This rise is a response to, perhaps, how many male killers we have in media who haven’t needed to be “corrupted” by anything. Up until recently, there was this latent idea in society that women were inherently good-which is a form of sexism-and having just plain evil women in books and movies today is an attempt to disprove that notion. If that is the purpose of the book, then it definitely hits that mark on that front, though I don’t think that idea is strong enough to carry the entire novel and the torture and rape aspects of it.
I do love things that are subversive and push the envelope but perhaps I just prefer it to be more subtle? As I’ve said, I think the author has definitely talent with their prose and descriptions, so perhaps I’ll check out another of hers in the future.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Blood, Murder, and Toxic friendship
solenophage's review
dark
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? It's complicated
2.5
Classic over-the-top gore, violence, and sexual sadism could have made for a good time but didn't quite manage it for me. It was rather slow with a lot of time on the romance and the main character's introspection, neither of which was very compelling. I went back and forth on whether I found this look into Maeve's psyche interesting or insufferable. She's pretentious and has a not-like-other-girls streak. She's always thinking about how male serial killers just are what they are, but women have to be made into monsters by trauma/abuse/etc. but not her; she's always been "the wolf". Fair enough, except all the killing we get to see her do is triggered by traumatic loss in her life. Kind of diluted the strength of that concept. Since it takes a long time for the book to get to any action and the other characters weren't explored much, it was good that Maeve had some depth, but it felt unintentionally hypocritical.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Drug use, Gore, Rape, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, and Murder
rhadden's review
challenging
dark
funny
tense
fast-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? Yes
5.0
I absolutely tore through this disturbing and brutal slasher novel that evokes American Psycho, Georges Batailles, halloween music and kids cartoons. Told from the point of view of Maeve, a Hollywood heiress and deranged murderer who portrays the extremely popular "Ice Princess" at the "Happiest Place on Earth," this excellent horror novel holds nothing back as her rampage through Tinseltown unfolds. Completely blood-soaked and upsetting throughout, but at times hilarious, touching, and even steamily romantic. Extremely high recommendation from me, but certainly check the content warnings on this one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Death, Drug use, Gore, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Grief, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail
herasrevenge88's review against another edition
dark
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
1.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Blood, Stalking, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail