Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Night Film

❤️ 🧡 💛 💚 💙 💜 my about / byf / CW info carrd: uchiha-madara 💜 💙 💚 💛 🧡 ❤️

What a fuck.

Ok the depth and miscellania of the world setting was fucking fantastic. It felt like a very solid ground to such a convoluted mystery. Who is Cordova? No actually you should be asking where is Ashley? No actually you should be asking something else! The questions kept piling up.

ok not to be a huge loser but this mc dude does remind me a whole lot of Alan wake from the titular game 'Alan wake'. An unlikeable on purpose protagonist, mostly decent motive albeit totally self serving. He's very well written so far and it's not entirely grating to read. I still want to beat his ass though. And at some point it felt like it was glancing the fourth wall, becoming bizarrely self aware.

Also the multimedia portion of the book? Stunning. The newspaper clippings, screencaps, websites, really added something amazing to the story. I liked the additional, brief view points these gave, and how they broke up the story so it wasn't an endless asshole investigating this mystery.

I really loved the ending. I think it maintained the ambiguity of the mystery very well. The story was strong enough that I don't mind this type of closure, either. Is it supernatural? Or is it something else? What was that cheesy phrase? The greatest lie the devil ever told was that the devil doesn't exist.

I never reread books, but this one I'll make the exception for.

Transmisogyny in the book. Major spoilers.

hey look there's a godawful scene where the MC goes to a ultra secret dark underground super exclusive rich people club that apparently Cordova frequented from time to time. The author and MC make a huge deal about WHOA there's transwomen here wha t the? This also comes up briefly later in some 'that woman from the club... or WAS she a 'woman'...?!?!?' speculation that the MC does.

It's utterly jarring and took me out of the plot because, to me, it's not a big deal. Oh a woman at a location where women go to, whatever. I get that the author is making the MC a purposefully unlikeable character but I think this goes a lil too far. At that point in the book, it's pretty well established the MC is a piece of shit.
Because we're discussing this I'll mention that I'm transmisogyny exempt trans nonbinary person. Just to be clear this is the pov that I am seeing this content from.

Major ableism, alcohol use, anti japanese racism, anti native racism, antiblack racism, body shaming, bullying, child abuse, classism, fatphobia, death, dogs, drowning, drug abuse, gore, hand trauma, misgendering, misogyny, paranoia, psychiatric institutions, racial fetishization, sibling rivalry, sinophobia, suicide, suicide baiting, transmisogyny, xenophobia

medium ableism towards addiction, divorce, drowning, fatphobia, fungus, gore, insects, kidnapping, marital infidelity, misogyny, paranoia, parasites, pedophilia, grooming, age gap
drug use , unsanitary

minor Charles manson mention, Islamophobia, anti Japanese j slur used once, cults, death threats, genocide, human trafficking, pedophilia, quentin tarantino, self harm, sexual abuse, sexual content, tasteless torture camp reference, teacher student relationship, torture, water boarding joke

Content Warnings

limina's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

I LOVED this book. It reminded me of many others, but especially Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. I was totally engrossed. Fun Fact- there's bonus material on the author's website. At the end of the book it mentions an app but it appears to be defunct.

Content Warnings

illuminatedspace's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-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

I think when I read this book, I'm to believe that the main character is kind of a sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist pos as a character flaw. However these views of the character are expressed so casually, explicitly, and often over this 600 page book I couldn't help but feel I was being indoctrinated with these garbage views. The lack of challenge the main character faces for these views is distracting over the length of the book. Nearly every non-white, non-cis male supporting character is described with harmful, uncharitable, and frankly boring stereotypes. This harmful depiction is reinforced by the fact that the characters do not say or do anything to challenge the initial description, not does anyone around the main character. This happened so consistently I couldn't help but wonder if the author also held these views or if they had just failed to create an unlikable/unreliable main character. The result was instead an unlikable world. Not challenging, or thought provoking but flat, informed by stereotypes and lacking nuance. I suppose the depth of the world is supposed to come from the lengths of depravity and pain people are willing to inflict on each other, but the cynicism of this worldview doesn't seem deserved?
The mystery was also kind of boring to me.

the mystery is kind of laid out early in the book and all the evidence gathering just confirms what was already told. Until the last 100 pages of the book when the biggest confirmation of evidence could possibly be a hallucination and the motivation could have been something else but maybe it's all real and maybe it isn't

. But the question of what really happened didn't feel like a fun puzzle to solve for me.
The mixed media elements are novel but not integral to telling the story.
If the book was shorter it may have been higher rated for me. It's not unreadable, but I hardly enjoyed any of the time I spent reading the book and nearly quit several times. I stayed for the resolution which in my opinion didn't really pay off and the denumont was so incredibly drawn out it felt like the book was ending 5 times before the actual last page. The climax was a bit of a page turner but the main character seemed to turn into a different person and some of their actions that provided the most dramatic situations seemed unmotivated. That paired with the fact that

the most interesting parts may have been a poisonous plant hallucination

wasn't enough to save the book for me.

Content Warnings

nicolinebl's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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

3.0

This was a confusing but intriguing read. Honestly, just calling it that is underselling it; it was definitely an experience.

I started reading this book two days ago and barely did anything else besides that because I just needed to know how it ended.

It starts of slow, then it gets really intense for a while but then it takes a turn that I honestly didn't appreciate nor understand and then it changes directions near the end again, leaving me quite puzzled.

None of the characters in this book seem like nice people, Nora probably being the nicest one and the main character Scott honestly being one of the most annoying characters. There are a lot of characters to keep track of by the way, I started writing them down lol!

There are also a lot of trigger warnings for this book, the one that made me the most upset being transphobic undertones. Not sure if that's the writers prejudice coming through or her showing that her character is transphobic, but I got really pissed at that part.

There were some parts where the writer tried to make things lighter by jokes or "funny" thoughts but in my opinion, they didn't really work. Also some parts - besides supernatural plotlines or course - were a bit unbelievable. Like how Scott was apparently so rich even though he'd been fired from his job and didn't seem to have a great job at the moment. And since he's investigating for like +-7 months and not actually working or something he's only spending money (and spending it like crazy). Nobody has that many spare change right?

Also, an in my opinion unnecessary loveplot near the ending - if you've read the book you know the part.

Besides that I am still fascinated by this book. I love the mix of mediums: articles, websitepages, documents, photo's etc. and even bonus content on the writers website (definitely check it out, especially the last one!)

I chose to read this book in October because of Halloween and must admit I was kind of let down, it wasn't that scary and

I hated that they had a whole supernatural plot, then decided to explain it all away and then afterwards sort of went back to the supernatural route.

I will end my review by saying that I do think this story could have been told in less than 600 pages and dragged a little at some parts but I most certainly do no regret reading this story; because at its main core, it did have some intriguing themes and phenomenal aesthetics. And gosh darn, I'm kind of sad that I'm not able to see the movies Cordova has made, him being fictional and all.

PS: Think this would be awesome in film format so that I could show my brother and friend who will never read a 600-pages book!

Content Warnings

lilifane's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

I wanted to love this book so much, but it didn’t work. I liked the beginning a lot when the characters were introduced and enjoyed the last 25-30% as well. But the middle part was just … too boring. Every time I thought the story went into an interesting direction, the author chose to stop and go the boring way instead. It was SO frustrating, when intriguing settings/characters/plot points were just abandoned midway. Still, I got attached to the characters and loved their interactions with each other. There were some REALLY cool settings and scenes, and I liked the story in general. I was just disappointed because I had expected more. Especially from the mixed media aspect. The additional pictures, texts and documents were … mostly unnecessary. They didn’t add to my reading experience at all. But that’s what I expect from a book which uses mixed media because I’ve seen it done really well in the past.

Content Warnings

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Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

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