Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

28 reviews

laurenw's review against another edition

dark reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Grief, Infidelity, Medical content, Murder, Pregnancy, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Child abuse, Death of parent, and Domestic abuse

bookish_affections's review

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Infidelity, Medical content, Misogyny, Murder, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, and Pregnancy

Minor: Child abuse

samusc's review

dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

5.0

This book is unlike any other I've read.
The science fiction and horror elements were incredibly well executed. Every detail mattered.
Having dealt with domestic abuse, the situations outlined here were intense and authentic.
Sarah Gaileys' acknowledgement at the end confirmed what I feared, but I'm thankful that their work has hopefully helped them, and I know helped me.

Full review to come.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Violence, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Blood, Confinement, Death of parent, Medical content, Panic attacks/disorders, Pregnancy, and Toxic relationship

amressing's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense fast-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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Infidelity, Medical content, Murder, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Vomit

reading_bug's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Bullying, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexism, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Abortion, Child abuse, Confinement, Death of parent, Gore, Grief, and Kidnapping

Minor: Alcoholism and Car accident

nxclx's review

dark mysterious 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

This was such an interesting read, and while not the "nonstop thrill" that the synopsis said that it would be, I found it captivating and thought provoking. Personally, I think it reads more as a novella, with limited characters and a somewhat vague and limited setting. Kind of a mix of This is How You Lose the Time War mixed with the gore of Wilder Girls or The Grace Year. It didn't keep me on the edge of my seat, but rather had me calmly bracing for what was to come next, as if I was in the narrators shoes. It worked really well for me and I'll definitely be checking out the authors other works.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Pregnancy, Suicide, and Gore

Moderate: Car accident and Death of parent

Minor: Vomit

thechiaraface's review

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

5.0

To start, this book is a bit genre-bending - it could fall under sci-fi, domestic/psychological thriller, horror, or literary fiction in my opinion. The premise sounds kind of humorous (a man leaves his wife for a clone of her that he created to be 'nicer'), but this book is anything but light & humorous. This book is dark and tense and full of commentary. This book is exactly what I want from a speculative/sci-fi thriller, it explores these big ideas from a different angle than realistic fiction ever could. And this book explores so much, it explores autonomy, individualism, power, misogyny, gender expectations, grooming, personhood (what makes a person a person), the cyclical nature of trauma, nature vs. nurture, and the darkness within human nature. I found this book entirely engrossing. The commentary and exploration of these big ideas did not get in the way of the plot, pacing or story. This book does have plot but the story leans more towards  character-driven than plot-driven. This isn't one of those wild-ride twisty-turny shocking thrillers. This story more just slowly gets more and more chillingly  f*ed up and through that you really get to understand the characters and explore the darker side of human nature.  All the characters are interesting and nuanced and well-developed. Overall, I really really liked this but it does have a lot of content warnings so check those out of you want/need them. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Medical content, Misogyny, Murder, Sexism, and Toxic relationship

marrowe's review

challenging dark emotional fast-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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Domestic abuse, and Emotional abuse

Moderate: Death, Death of parent, Confinement, Medical trauma, Medical content, Violence, and Murder

enemies-to-friends, found family, orphan black

girlonbooks's review

dark mysterious 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

💍💍💍💍(four stars as rated in wedding rings worn until death do us part, do us part, do us part, do us part…)

Evelyn Caldwell’s human cloning technology changed the world for everyone, herself included. When Evelyn’s catches her husband having an affair with a clone of her Evelyn is forced to keep it quiet or risk ruining everything she’s worked for. Now her ex is dead – murdered in self defense by his “new wife” – and the women must work together to cover it up or lose the things that matter most to both of them.

“Why would you ever cut the blooms off the rosebush?”
It was one of the only truly useful things she ever taught me: Stress stimulates growth. Sometimes, in order to make something develop in the right direction, you have to hurt it.

You know that feeling when you’re reading a book and you think, “oh this is going to get made into a movie without question.” I felt that so many times while reading The Echo Wife that I may just go ahead and start my own studio and make the thing myself! It’s just such a gloriously original thriller that the idea of it not getting optioned feels a bit preposterous. I, for one, totally devoured this book and now consider myself an official member of the “Sarah Gailey is brilliantly talented in all ways” club. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys dark themes, LOTS of internal reflection on the part of the protagonist and morally ambiguous characters. To me, though, none of that felt tiring to get through, which is actually rather shocking considering that this book is far more character based than it is plot based. Especially for a thriller. From a literary standpoint, The Echo Wife is edited just beautifully and the flow of the thing itself is outstanding.

The best part of science fiction (imo) is being asked to suspend your disbelief in order to entertain a false reality. It turns out, though, that there are a lot of people who don’t actually like that. Which is wild to me since, that is literally the POINT behind the genre? The Echo Wife asks a lot of disbelief suspension on the part of the reader. So, if you’re not ready to do that then this book will not hit the mark for you. On that note, if you can’t get on board with fake science then you probably should mosey on out of the sci-fi genre and stay out of it forever. 🙈

✨ Rep in this book: NB author

✨ Content warnings for this book: death of a spouse, death of a parent, murder, blood, medical stuff, adultery, domestic violence, confinement

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Murder, Blood, Medical content, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Violence, Confinement, and Suicide

Minor: Death of parent

shelfmadewoman's review

adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

You won’t find me reading a lot of domestic thrillers... but you can certainly find me picking up a domestic thriller by Sarah Gailey that are about... well... what this is about. I suggest not looking at the summary before reading if you can bear it. As with most thrillers, its best to go in with a blank slate!

Without getting into any specifics, I can tell you that Gailey goes beyond the surface ideas of the story and explores ethics and consent in a new way.

I liked it a lot! It was twisty as heck! I would do it again!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Car accident, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Grief, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, and Violence