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bre_'s review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Graphic: Blood, Self harm, Death, Gore, Suicide attempt, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Animal death and Alcoholism
Minor: Sexual assault, Abortion, and Vomit
jully_bean's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Suicide attempt, Self harm, Blood, Gore, Emotional abuse, Death, Murder, and Medical content
Moderate: Physical abuse, Animal death, and Death of parent
Minor: Sexual assault and Incest
catbaker07's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Suicide attempt and Violence
Moderate: Body horror, Blood, Incest, Animal death, Vomit, Death, and Abortion
strawbrifieldsforever's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Moderate: Violence, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Death, and Blood
Minor: Sexual violence, Suicide attempt, Addiction, Vomit, and Incest
alaskanlad's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
Graphic: Death, Animal death, Violence, Gore, and Murder
Moderate: Rape, Incest, and Sexual assault
floralfox's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
Overall, I don't think the book worked for a several reasons:
1. There's a duality to this book. On one side, it's extremely slow. Most of the book takes place in the rambling, obsessive mind of 17-year-old Jade Daniels as she relates everything in her life to a slasher film. She's a janitor and sometimes a scene of her picking up trash and thinking about a slasher movie can cover 2-3 entire pages, but none of the information Jade turns over in her head—and none of the actions she's taking—are significant enough to warrant the meandering narrative. But on the other side, the book is trying to cover so many topics at once—threading together several complex topics and histories, where none of them are red herrings and they all get their moment to shine in the end. That means it's a story about repressed personal trauma and history, a story about centuries-old Native trauma, a story about poverty and gentrification, a story about grief and revenge, a ghost story, a Friday the 13th knockoff, a modern slasher, and more all wrapped up into one... except that... most of the time, it doesn't feel like <i>any</i> of them. It feels like a 17-year-old girl rambling in any interior monologue that never stops because she doesn't do anything and doesn't talk to anyone.
2. A lot of important details are embedded into long, rambling dialogue from other characters, such as interviews or tape recordings, and the author is FAITHFUL to the style of long, meandering talking styles where characters repeat themselves, trail off, backtrack, etc. And because they're usually faithfully transcribed, there's nothing to break up this wall of text in the story—no body language, no atmosphere, no nothing. It's easy to get lost in the details.
3. I had to re-read scenes and pages SO MANY TIMES because I'd realize that I wasn't taking anything in because it didn't seem like anything was happening. Then, I'd go back, reread it, and realize that most of the time, I'd been right, and I didn't need to waste my time. Couple that with a lot of times where I couldn't keep track of the passage of time, or thought dialogue between characters jumped around in a way that was confusing, or couldn't orient the characters in space or understand what they were doing with their bodies (or why they were doing it)... overall, there was simply a lot of confusion. It felt like really sloppy editing, both in the point of being able to follow the story, but also in thinking that this 400 page book probably could've been trimmed down to 200 pages.
4. For being in Jade's head SO much, there were important times where I didn't really understand her motivations or feelings. For instance, why WAS Jade compelled to keep the secret of her father's abuse? Obviously Letha, Hardy, and Holmes' approach to trying to get this information out of her was absolutely terrible—but Jade didn't actually engage with their questions internally. And because there were really no significant scenes of Jade with her father after that scene took place, when the truth WAS finally revealed, it didn't land with the weight it should've landed with. It all felt very fractured and distant. In another way, I had no idea what Jade envisioned for herself or her own safety when sh was convinced that a slasher was coming to Proofrock and that Letha was the final girl. Jade had already attempted suicide at this point in the book, but I didn't have a strong sense of whether she felt like that she'd be merely an observer on the periphery of the violence or a victim in her own right—or even how she felt about that possibility! It just felt like she didn't engage with it, even though she was also obsessing about it, but that lack of engagement didn't feel intentional. It felt like an oversight.
5. For someone who was constantly piecing together the plots of 100 different slasher movies and constantly coming up with motivations and theories as to the violence and murders happening in Proofrock, once Jade actually had most of the information after the blood bath in the final pages, she didn't thread ANY of it together. There ended up being not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different murderers in the scope of this book... AND supernatural elements, which felt like a genre-shift, AND one of the red herrings ended up having some validity to it. That is a LOT going on without any sort of clarity at the end. And truth be told, of these four murderers, one felt cheesy, one felt unrealistic, and two felt simply underdeveloped.
There were some good ideas here, but some bad execution. Mostly a matter of style and editing, IMO.
Graphic: Gore, Murder, and Violence
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual assault, Incest, Vomit, and Suicide attempt
danimacuk's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Animal death, Gore, Death, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide attempt, and Violence
Moderate: Incest, Child death, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Alcoholism, and Child abuse
Minor: Vomit, Racism, Rape, and Pedophilia
effingunicorns's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
5.0
As for the rest of the story, it was fun and genuinely delightful to have a POV character genre-savvy enough to be calling out the story beats even as they were happening, but not quite genre-savvy enough (or her awareness too skewed by the trauma she was avoiding) to recognize her real place in it. It was incredibly relatable--but also incredibly frustrating--to watch her spin her wheels late in the story, trying to fit the escalating events into the version of the story she'd already decided it was, racing to figure it all out before the big reveal only to realize it was an option she'd abandoned ages ago. It was a necessary part of her final girl metamorphosis, though, so ultimately I can't bring myself to make any deductions for it.
I am, of course, diving right into the sequel within the next day or two, and the conclusion in March already sounds like it's gonna be phenomenal 👀
Graphic: Murder and Violence
Moderate: Racism, Suicide attempt, Alcoholism, Sexual assault, and Incest
tesshersh's review against another edition
- 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
4.5
Spoiler for my other complaint:
Also: cannot recommend the audio book enough, cara gee was amazing
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Abortion, Colonisation, Suicide attempt, Addiction, Animal death, Blood, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Death, Alcoholism, Suicidal thoughts, Body horror, Suicide, Murder, Pedophilia, Racism, Child death, Incest, and Gore
HUGE trigger warnings - not just in the gore/violence you would associate with a thriller but for other content as well, please check content warnings before readingchelseahelton's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Graphic: Suicide attempt, Self harm, and Suicide
Moderate: Incest