Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - Southern Gothic - Das Grauen wohnt nebenan

Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

Southern Gothic - Das Grauen wohnt nebenan by Grady Hendrix

500 reviews

sannesbooks's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

This was a really enjoyable read. It was easy to read and fast to get through. The book started kinda slow, but once you are halfway you can't stop reading. I appreciated the time jumps in between. I think this was a good way to make the pacing right.

I liked the characters in this book. My only complaint is that the women in the bookclub had kind of the same personalities. This made it sometimes hard to follow, and you will mix up characters.

I loved the depiction of womenhood / friendship. It was frustrating to read about the sexism and misogyny, but I think it is realistic for that time period and it calls for reflection. It was interesting to see how different characters responded to injustice and misogyny. I also appreciated the description of rich vs poor neighbourhood and white vs colored people, discrimination that is still happening today. I enjoyed to see how the characters reacted to the differences in treatment.

Patricia's son, Blue, had an obsession with Nazis. I kinda think it is weird to include that because it didn't do anything for the storyline. I thought and wished this was a set up for something bigger but it wasn't and therefore I think this is an unnessecary 'story line'. I think the writer just want to add something to make the kid seem creepy but at the end of the book he portrait as creepy, so there was basically no point.

Another thing that was, in my opinion, only included for shock value was the thigh blood sucking. The vampire only drank blood from the inner thighs of people. In the book, it also clearly states that this blood sucking makes its victims sexually aroused. Also, the victims were naked during this for no reason. Unnessecary in my opinion, especially because his victims were minors! There was also no explaination for why it should have to be done this way, so I think it was just unnessecary.

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jess7son's review against another edition

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3.0

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bittie_bee's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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m4rtt4's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

This was a lot darker and sadder than I had expected, but I ate it up nonetheless. Very few books have made me feel as many emotions as this one did: joy, anger, sadness, disgust, fear, and empathy can all be felt through this story, just to name a few. The husbands made me want to bang my head against a wall!! Misogyny really was one of the horror elements. The gore went a bit overboard at times, but despite the strange mixture of emotions and clashing images, I'd highly recommend this book! The trigger warnings should not be taken lightly, though.

+ Bahni Turpin's narration was absolutely brilliant!

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snslayer's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Good but absolutely brutal to read as a woman. Perfectly captures white women at their worst and at their best and the lives we ruin along the way. I had to put it down for a bit in the middle because I was getting so worked up about the husbands.

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dailybaileyk's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

I loved the first few chapters of this book and I think this is an interesting and decently told story. I found myself skimming pages waiting for action to happen as a majority of the book is building/sitting in tension. It’s an interesting take on the vampire genre but I felt if you took the vampire part out of the book and replaced with an equally dangerous “normal human” male, you could have achieved the same effect, especially since the “supernatural elements” were few and far between. My anxiety was more directed towards the misogyny, racism, and the kids being kids. This also felt like a “gaslighting your wife 101” novel. I think this book did a phenomenal job illustrating the stress and struggles of a mom trying to navigate life and keep their family safe (even if the relationship with said family is horrible at best). This was less of a vampire hunting guide and more of a testament to make sure the men in your life should respect you.

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coldheartedbirch's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

i was expecting dark and gorey, but lovable moms fighting evil. what i got was actually one of the worst books i’ve read in years with ZERO likable characters. there’s really only one successful creepy/scary moment (aside from how their husbands treat them) as he’s prone to extremely overdone and campy horror scenes that were more laughable than anything.

rampant sexism, crazy slow book into a way-too-fast, terrible wrap up, lots of things that make no sense, just not good. read Anything else.

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