Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - You've Lost a Lot of Blood

I have no idea what I just read, and I loved it! I read this so fast, and was just utterly mesmerized by it. The prose was really beautiful without holding on to any lit fic pretensions. It still felt solidly rooted in genre fic. I really wasn't sure where this was going. I love horror that feel cyclical. It's so creepy and haunting, and this book pulled that off well. The structure of the book was an interesting approach, and a great way to break up the novella within the novel, and leave you with cliffhangers. The only thing I didn't like were the the transcripts of phone recordings. It felt like kind of a wacky, unrealistic way to get the killers' actual voices into the text, and didn't quite make sense to me. Who records themselves having convos, and then records their inner thoughts during the conversation over the original audio after the fact? Can you even do that on a phone? Was he using audio editing software on his laptop??!

Content Warnings

cutelilcryptid's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

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

2.0

First, I want to say that I was SO READY to like this book. I picked it up in a bookstore with no context (I haven't read Larocca's previous work and knew little about it, despite the TikTok hype). I read the Introduction and thought that reading the collected writings of a fictional murderer would be AWESOME. Even though I knew it was fiction, I bought into the concept entirely and I was HYPED to read it.

...and that's where the excitement stopped. I'm not going to whine about content. Shoving toothpicks in people's ears? Daydreaming about how you'd kill your boyfriend? Masturbating on cancer patients? Cyborg cunnilingus? Fine, whatever. I signed up for weird shit when I chose to read a book in this genre. The actual reasons for my discontent are outlined below.

1. Have I mentioned that I love the concept of this book? The concept is that this collection of dialogue, poetry, and novella chapters were written by a serial killer, Martyr Black, and has been published in order to "shed light" on his crimes, victims, and possibly give hints to where he's disappeared to. I was 100% ready to take a highlighter to this book and make a whole ass conspiracy theory pinboard trying to connect the dots and piece together everything he did, where he disappeared to, and why he left. There's this tendency with writing, especially with poetry, to try to conflate the narrative voice with the voice of the writer themselves and view all poetry as autobiographical (*cough*Sylvia Plath*cough*), and I thought this book was going to provide some really interesting commentary on that idea. Which leads to my next point:

2. The ending "plot twist" totally fumbled the entire concept for the book (I use "plot twist" in the loosest sense, this book has no real plot beyond what I already stated). At the end of the book you find out that

MARTYR BLACK PLAGIARIZED EVERYTHING FROM HIS VICTIMS. With the exception of the dialogues recorded on his phone, the poems and the ENTIRE NOVELLA were stolen from people he murdered. So any REAL attempts to piece the mystery of Martyr Black together through his writing is an utter fucking waste because HE DIDN'T WRITE IT.

While this might provide interesting commentary on the "haha this is why you shouldn't treat people's writing as autobiographical" idea I mentioned earlier, the real reason I hate it is because it effectively shirks all responsibility for the established concept.

Remember how I said I was ready to take a highlighter to this and go crazy connecting dots trying to figure out who Martyr is and why he did what he did? The ending renders that effectively impossible, because it's not actually written by Martyr. As a reader, I felt this was a cheap and lazy ploy. It would be much more difficult, after all, to craft a self-contained anthology that, bit by bit, reveals more and more about the writer and how his dark obsessions lead to hideous acts. Instead we get "hee hoo the whole thing was stolen anyway". It's the equivalent of getting to the end of the book and the main character wakes up in bed and says "Wow, what a strange dream". I was pissed.

ONE MAJOR PROBLEM with this ending: if this is an anthology of "stolen" poetry, there are still way too many thematic and stylistic connections between different works. One of the poems mentions "Holy Eucharist" and there's a later poems is titled "Eucharist". The same poem is also titled "I Search for You Until My Lungs Sprout Metal" and the ENTIRE NOVELLA is about people being infested by machines. These are just a few examples I can think of off hand and I'm sure there's plenty more. There also just seems to be little effort put into differentiating the works from one another stylistically (you know, the way they would be if all written by different people). Like, the book isn't even properly selling the "this was all plagiarism" concept that well. It's infuriating.

3. Purely as prose, the writing itself is quite good. Larocca's use of language is exquisite and masterful--to say anything less because I didn't like the end of the book would be discrediting him. The poetry is think is a little less inspired--it just seems like regular prose from anywhere else in the book with some line breaks tossed in. Good poetry is not just prose with line breaks, and I will die on that hill.

Content Warnings

madisonreads_'s review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

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

3.75

Content Warnings

rosage's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

what did i just read?! this was the most incredible horror novel i’ve ever read! i want to read any and everything by eric larocca now. this book was phenomenal!

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