Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Spare Room

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz

3 reviews

pookiee's review

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mysterious 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? Yes

2.0

not a thriller; mostly throuple drama

Content Warnings

an_library_stan's review

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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

1.0

Unquestionably some of the worst writing I've read. I think it's aiming somewhere between thriller, romance and smut? But it wasn’t smutty. It was suspenseful at times, but clumsy plot or writing invariably took me out of it at key moments. The romance felt generic and so normy. A good reminder that bisexuals are a diverse community and some of us are unironically hanging live laugh love signs in our foyers.

Mind you, I did finish all 64 chapters, prologue and epilogue (in a 325 page book). I was entertained. But first I had to re-orient myself. The writing was going to be bad, so why not enjoy it for its comedic value?

A word on the language.

It's a bad sign when an author uses the phrase, "the vibe was…" But lo, chapter 1, page 1 had the following gem:

While I sat in the cavernous belly of Thirtieth Street Station, the vibe was fearful, hushed, crackling with distrust.

The overuse of metaphors and similes annoyed me. Many of them were redundant and others contradictory. Eventually I started bookmarking my favorites. Here are a few:

I tap his name on my phone-no answer. Anxiety hops and swirls like chickadees.

Maybe he'll sit in that kennel of an apartment and realize how much he misses me, how much we love each other. I sit up and let hope roll around in me like wine dregs in a glass.

The tires crunch over gravel as we pull into the parking lot, a level point in this sea of crinkled land. The sky feels closer here, like someone lowered it with a pulley, the unbroken blue so rich and bright I could almost brush my fingers against it. In the woods, shards of sunlight pelt us like hail, trees and shrubs bow at our feet, and sculptural mushrooms blip out of logs.

As our lips touch, a million thoughts run through my mind at once, all in a microsecond, a computer's hyperthreading, a multitude of sparks charging out of a center point, a big bright-red firework that lights the whole night sky.

Hours later, as the sky is darkening, I watch the gate close behind their Lexus. My heart's already thumping like I've joined the line outside a haunted house. I let time pass in case they turn around. When I'm sure they're gone, I spring into action.

The voice is the flame that touches the end of the firecracker and makes the truth blaze: Elizabeth

We continue our sweep, making sure we're alone, checking for chinks in the security, looking for evidence that this was an outside job. I feel like we're Dickens characters wearing nightshirts and holding oil lamps and scurrying around a spooky mansion. We find nothing; the house is sealed up tight.

Deep breath in and shoom, we're off, moving fast like the sphere in a pinball machine. We walk through the whole day in detail, starting with the minute I drove home from the Ritz and encountered a surprising new houseguest. My confidence grows every time we move ahead in my recounting, like this is a board game and I'm inching closer, closer to the end.

Lets talk about chapters.

The chapter breaks had me loling. Dropped in randomly amongst the pages like chocolate sprinkles in vanilla ice cream. One example:

No. I have no idea what's about to come out of her mouth, but I know it's big and bad and it has the potential to turn this entire offer on its head. That means it's the last thing I want to hear. Stop there. She sighs. "Right now... she's missing."

(Chapter break)

I rock backward. "Missing?" They both nod gravely. "From the District," she says. "We heard it on the news. They still haven't found her." "That's terrible." My fingers fan against my breastbone. It's incomprehensible, something from a true-crime special. "What do they think happened to her?"

The chapter beginnings felt like a bad YA novel. E.g.

A gun fires, bang, and I startle awake. It's bright now, sun soaking through those filmy curtains. I don't hear it again. A truck back-firing, maybe.

Brooklyn-I love it, the bustle, the fat, fire-hued boughs forming tunnels over streets of sepia brownstones, the playgrounds bubbling with children and parks fizzing with groups of friends.

(this book is supposed to be in the lockdown days of covid, I'm not clear why Brooklyn and Philly were so crowded and bustling).

I thought the book might be smutty. Alas, she gave us plenty of room to read between the lines.

"Leave it," he says. "We'll get your presents later." "Aren't you Miss Popular?" Sabrina adds. She grabs Nathan's shoulder to jokingly push him out of the way. She kisses me too, and runs a hand along my side. When it's over and I'm flushed and breathless and floating in the stratosphere, I murmur, "Let's do that forever."

Nathan seals himself in his office that night, so Sabrina visits me in my room, nuzzling my neck and kissing my temple, my collarbone, my belly. When she's done, I try to return the favor, but after seeming close for an uncomfortably long time, she touches my cheek.

What the book lacks in smut, it does not make up through other forms of intimacy. For much of the book, Kelly mourns the great relationship she had with Mike. In which he remembered that she doesn’t like graveyards, and they crack jokes on long car rides. I wish Mike was just a foil to make her relationship with Nathan and Sabrina seem more exciting, but their dynamics aren’t much deeper.

"How's Virginia?" Mike's voice is reedy and weak. It cheers me, in a twisted way; him mourning my departure is a good sign. Okay so far. I'm trying to find the entrance to a graveyard now." "Why? You hate cemeteries." A tender nip to my heart-he really knows me.

Not like Mike. Before the pandemic locked us inside and brought out the worst in us, we could still delight each other with a goofy joke. Back in February, we passed the time on the thirteen-hour drive from Chi- cago with a game: pointing at things along the road and spinning out silly hypotheticals. We should buy that abandoned skating rink. We should move into that RV park. We should get jobs at the water park on that billboard. Imagined futures tied together by me. I jab my fork into a tortellini, piercing it like an eye. "Are most of your friends in DC.?"

Finally, some thoughts on the plot.

The twists and turns in the murder mystery felt implausible, both in what happens and in how they are introduced. Everyone’s a suspect in this book. If you think someone is geographically too far away to commit a murder, guess again! If you think someone has been exonerated, guess again! You’ll get to go back and forth and back and forth with Kelly - our first person narrator - about whether she is deeply in love with a character and they her, or whether they committed a murder and are about to murder her! At one point we get Kelly wondering whether she committed the murder, apparently while sleep walking? She’s relieved on multiple occasions that she didn’t kill another character subconsciously.

Kelly is not particularly bright but she is self-absorbed. At one point she seemingly narrowly escapes to a hotel from her lovers, who she now (finally) suspects of murdering their ex-partner. The next morning she's returning to their house ready to "make things work."

If you are ever worried about your ability to produce a work of fiction, read this book. If you know someone who feels like their writing is bad, gift them this book. Don’t let good be the enemy of done. And hey, I was clearly entertained.

Content Warnings

filmscoreman108's review

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dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

2.5

Steamy, Romantic Thriller, Pandemic-era

Plot synopsis: Kelly enters into a polyamorous relationship with an old high school friend and her husband after her marriage plans crumble, but this new relationship comes with dark secrets.

Thoughts: The first third was fun. There was Kelly dealing with her relationship issues while being seduced by the charm of her new hosts. The romantic tension was kind of exciting and I couldn't wait for their eventual hookup. The next third was spent building up tension and mystery, and this kept the pages turning for me. It seemed inevitable that things would go south for Kelly very soon. Then the last third opens with a game changing reveal that excited me even more. But after that, the story got a little too twist-heavy and convoluted. And the conclusion left a lot to be desired.

Characters: I wanted to root for Kelly, but in the end I nearly hated her. Sure, she's supposed to be naïve at the beginning, but she takes way too long to grow out of it. In the last few chapters of the book, I was honestly shocked with the state of mind she was in. And upon finishing, you realize how many warning signs she flat out ignored and it makes her seem like a selfish idiot. I also have a problem with the main couple, Sabrina and Nathan. They each have patches of darkness that show in key scenes that I feel are NEVER EXPLORED meaningfully. Major abuse is perpetrated by one of them, and it seems to never be explained, which annoyed me greatly.

Ending: Delivering one final twist, the book lost me. It was the unexpected choice, but I didn't but it. So yeah the ending kind of tanked this for me and made me like it less overall. Kelly is harder to root for as the book goes on, so no one is likeable (except for the cat).

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