Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Cleopatra and Frankenstein

This book does a brilliant job at capturing human emotions, and really shows that people really can be quite flawed. I loved how it flitted between different characters’ perspectives, even within one chapter. It meant i really got a strong feel about how each character is thinking and feeling throughout. Even though most of the characters were lowkey terrible, i felt attached to all of them in some way, which just made me want to keep reading.

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lillieeereads's review

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dark emotional funny hopeful sad slow-paced

5.0

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paulawind's review

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reflective 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

1.0

Rich People’s Problems but Wait, They All Have Tragic Backstories: A Novel

The only reason I finished this book was because it is my Book Club novel. I fought and sweated my way through page by page because it’s just so bad. It’s part of the trend for authors to try to make their books “deeper” by flooding every character with trauma. Pain Porn if you prefer.

The author thought that by giving each character a single-defining struggle she is making them less one-dimensional but because of that they felt almost like cartoon characters. Cleo - beautiful, thin, talented, young BUT WAIT she is depressed and has both mummy and daddy issues; Frank - beautiful, “manly”, successful, rich and older BUT WAIT he had mummy issues and is an alcoholic, Zoe - beautiful, thin, talented BUT WAIT she has seizures, Quentin - beautiful, thin, rich “snarky gay best friend” BUT WAIT he can’t come out of the closet because of his homophobic Polish family (fuck you for that Coc, enforcing Polish stereotypes) and is a drug addict, Anders - beautiful, thin, rich fuckboy BUT WAIT his step-son doesn’t like him anymore and his parents don’t visit him in the US. You see what I mean? The only half-decent characters are Eleanor and Santiago, just because they are not awful to other people, but they rarely are given voice and in the end are pushed into the role of “I can fix him” girl for Frank and “losing weight will let you find love”, respectively. Nauseating. TikTok girlies, wake up, this is not literary fiction you claim it to be.

The book obviously features a lot of content warnings - wouldn’t be a pain porn without it - but I’m not sure if it’s handled even passably well.

Cleo’s depression and its consequences, Frank’s alcoholism, Zoe’s inability to live without a trust fund, Anders’s familial infidelity - all get magically solved by the end, with no depth or mental insight given on any of the aforementioned. Cleo started painting and moved to Italy - depression solved; Frank “got fixed” by his mummy to-be-wife; Zoe just found herself a sugar daddy; and Anders swept the whole issue under the rug. We can’t of course forget that the happy ending is only given to straight people - queers go to hell with our only rep - Quentin - ending up a meth head and most likely dying

This book angered me on so many levels. It was the superficial depth, wannabe literary fiction, over sexualisation of everything (Zoe saying that she is “a real girl” now, after climaxing, nauseated me), disrespectful treatment of a lot of extremely heavy issues and -how could I forget - BLATANT plagiarism of other media (yes, I’m looking at you ripped-off Fleabag dinner scene). Awful

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