Reviews tagging 'Gore'

Las chicas by Emma Cline

31 reviews

taliatalksbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-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? No

3.0

The Girls by Emma Cline was a snapshot into the life of Evie and her involvement with a cult. I really wanted to love this book, but I felt like there were a few aspects that took me out of the story. First, the lens through with the story was told: and older Evie looking back at the past. While I didn’t mind the flashbacks, I thought the addition of these young characters who didn’t seem to care much about anything was out of place. I think the story could have been much more grounded if we were experiencing the traumas first hand for the entire novel, though I did like the added input from older Evie. I thought that the book was well-written, but the time jumps seemed random, more than planned. I also wish we had seen more of the progression of the cult behavior. It seemed to go pretty quickly from zero to one hundred and back again, with a lot of the middle ground feeling as though it lasted forever. Evie’s position on the outskirts created a blank space, that I wished we could have had filled in. A lot of the questions Evie had, especially about the other girls,were a lot of the same questions I had as a reader and these felt unanswered. Overall, it was an enjoyable read, but it was definitely a slower pace than I was anticipating with a cult novel.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Murder, Rape, Violence, Pedophilia, Domestic abuse, Drug use, and Adult/minor relationship

rachel24x7's review against another edition

dark tense slow-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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Sexual content, Pedophilia, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Murder and Cursing

Minor: Gore, Physical abuse, and Eating disorder

astha_shah's review against another edition

dark mysterious 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? Yes

3.0

Pretty solid book, well written, kinda twisted. I was into it. The jumping between points in time, though, took me out of it a little

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship

Moderate: Gore

gwenisnonbinary's review against another edition

dark tense medium-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? It's complicated

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Cursing, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Rape, Sexual violence, Drug use, Body horror, Gore, Pedophilia, Sexual harassment, Alcohol, and Murder

Moderate: Physical abuse

thesecretsapphic's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Blood, Gore, Rape, Sexual assault, Violence, Child abuse, Death, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Adult/minor relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Pedophilia, and Sexism

hannahlouise_'s review against another edition

dark emotional reflective tense medium-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

3.25

i for the most part enjoyed this book and read it quickly but it was lacking in parts and i didn’t hugely connect? well written and a really interesting concept, the iconic California 1969 based on Manson murders etc, but i did feel it could have been executed better.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Rape, Sexual content, Violence, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Blood, Toxic friendship, Gaslighting, Gore, Death, Drug use, Murder, and Sexual assault

greatexpectations77's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

The first couples pages of the book were over-the-top flowery language, and I wasn't sure if I was going to stick around, but it calmed down a little bit. I think the strongest parts were the descriptions of the very challenging time of pre-teen/early teenager-dom, when girls are really trying to just figure out how they fit into the world. I did not like the use of "Asiatic" to describe childlike banter - that feels.... not right and insulting to Asian languages. Just really unnecessary. I'm not sure if I'd read this author again because I might just not be able to get on her level of stuffed sentences. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Toxic relationship, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Body horror, Drug use, Sexual content, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Gore, Murder, Rape, Sexual assault, Violence, Addiction, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Alcohol, Bullying, and Excrement

Minor: Gaslighting, Child abuse, Fatphobia, Animal cruelty, and Animal death

sammiesshelf's review against another edition

adventurous 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? It's complicated

2.0

This book fell incredibly flat for me. I was excited by the premise of a Manson-esque cult story, and the cover caught my eye, but I was greatly disappointed. One thing I believe contributed greatly to this was the perspective the story is told from. The narrator is Evie Boyd, a girl who spent the summer leading up to the murders with the cult. She was 14 at the time. However, when she is telling the story, she is somewhere in her mid to late fifties from what I gathered, so the tone you are left with is jaded and depressing. It seems as if her life sort of peaked that summer, so her whole vibe is just sad and lonely. This makes it so that you lose a lot of the illusion of the cult in the beginning. Immediately, Evie points out the faults at the ranch, even though she didn't pay much mind to them at the time. For me, this made it feel like I was just reading about a bunch of dirty (like literally don't bathe) scammers the whole time, instead of almost experiencing the way they use their charisma and "message" to pull people in. I think much of what I expect a cult book to be is sort of through the eyes of someone falling for the trap, not someone who escaped and is recounting it forty years later. 

Additionally, there was a weird story going on in the present tense, which felt completely unnecessary. I think the author was going for some sort of parallel with the story of the cult, but it didn't really work and just made the book harder to get through. 

Overall, the book dragged terribly and was very easy for me to put down. The only time I found myself reading more than thirty pages at a time was when I finally said "Oh my god I want to get this over with." An enticing concept, but sadly a poor execution.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Drug use, Gore, Toxic friendship, Sexual content, Adult/minor relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Pedophilia, and Violence

Moderate: Physical abuse, Child abuse, and Emotional abuse

grboph's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

This was the first book I finished in 2022, and it was a very good one!! I have been very fascinated with cults recently, and this was a good deviation from a lot of the nonfiction things I have been using to learn about them (the cult in this book is clearly based on the Manson Family). Emma Cline is a wonderful writer, and it is somewhat hard to believe that this was the first book she ever wrote. I found Evie to be a very interesting character, and I think she had a good arc. The thing I liked the most about this book was that Evie felt very relatable, which was nice for me since I hadn't really encountered many teenage-girl characters like that in adult novels before. Then that scared me a little because I realized that maybe I could have fallen into something like Evie did if I had found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time when I was that age. I don't know if this was something Cline did on purpose, but either way, it made the book all the more thought-provoking. Overall, The Girls was a unique and engaging book and I enjoyed every second I spent reading it. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in cults or the 1960s as a time period, or anyone looking to read a unique story of any kind.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual content, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Child death

Moderate: Cursing, Excrement, Fatphobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, and Physical abuse

Minor: Bullying, Confinement, and Blood

This is a book about a violent, manipulative cult that culminates with a relatively graphic description of the murders of four people, one of whom is a young child. Also, the whole reason that the main character is drawn into the cult in the first place is because of someone she has an obsession with who is quite manipulative and cruel.

nsidhu's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective sad tense 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? It's complicated

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Drug use, Toxic friendship, and Adult/minor relationship

Moderate: Child abuse and Pedophilia

Minor: Blood and Gore