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auntiejamie's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
2.0
Graphic: Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Rape, Transphobia, Death, Body shaming, Child abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Mental illness, and Racism
axdixon's review
2.0
Graphic: Suicide
Moderate: Homophobia, Racism, Transphobia, Body shaming, Xenophobia, and Misogyny
madarauchiha's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
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.
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
Graphic: Ableism, Alcohol, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Suicide, Transphobia, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Ableism, Drug use, Fatphobia, Gore, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Misogyny, and Pedophilia
Minor: Genocide, Islamophobia, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Self harm, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, and Trafficking
illuminatedspace's review against another edition
- 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
The mystery was also kind of boring to 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
Graphic: Abandonment, Ableism, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Biphobia, Body horror, Body shaming, Car accident, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cultural appropriation, Cursing, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Racism, Sexism, Sexual violence, Stalking, Suicide, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, and Violence
jbellomy's review against another edition
1.0
I'm frankly shocked that Pessl hasn't been ~cancelled~ by the Twitter mob. The horrifying lens through which this author clearly views the world should not be given a platform. Here are some examples (though not specific, because no one's going to read this review and so I'm not going to get a physical copy and spend time scouring this trashfire):
- every single description of a character of Asian descent is slathered in racism. This probably happens around ten times, my absolute favorite (read: least favorite, burn it in hellfire) instance being when Scott is shocked that an Asian person speaks with an American accent โ or as he says, "without an accent" lol Scott. The audiobook is even worse, as the narrator makes the very fun choice to read Cleo (who, by the way, is the Only Good Character in this never-ending tome) with a stereotypical accent, despite the fact that her accent is never mentioned. Other POC do not fare better. For example, there are two Latinas present in this book. One is a cowering superstitious maid who can't speak English. The other is a human trafficker eternally devoted to serving a white guy. I'm 90% sure this book uses the word "exotic" to describe WOC. (Don't fact check me on that. The fact that it's plausible is horror enough honestly.)
- there are multiple instances of needless transphobia. Hopper & Scott's reactions to the women working in the Secret Man Club is the worst of it. We also get very enjoyable and completely okay comments about the person who gave Nora all her clothes. Scott's never met this person, but he's gonna judge them, because they have a BOY NAME and collect WOMEN'S CLOTHES so they must be silly and weird!! Cool, Scott! You're so fucking cool!
- What really sealed the deal for me was when the only character to show same-sex attraction in, again, an absolute UNIT of a book, is shown to be a pedophilic predator. Ah, yes, Pessl! What a good and informed take on the queer community you have!
- Oh and there's plenty of sweet sweet bodyshaming in here too, because of course there is.
Here's a link to a review that has some details about this aspect of the book. Aaaand here's my absolute favorite review (except why the two stars, my dude? Lean into the anger).
Dangerous and untrue characterizations like this are inarguably bad. It's not a cute homage to hardboiled noir detectives. It's not a look into a morally grey protagonist. It's not interesting or edgy. It's lazy and it's shameful. These descriptions are presented as fact, and Scott's racist, transphobic, sexist perspective is never criticized at all. Why insert these elements? Populating a fictional world with disgusting stereotypes is not acceptable now, and it was not acceptable in 2013. I can't even say this was a "product of its time" because it was published SIX YEARS AGO. Bro, I'm usually one of the people that's like "eh we can like problematic stuff, very few people deserve to be fully cancelled" but the shit in this book is harmful in that it perpetuates pre-existing prejudices and it validates people who already carry those ideas.
If that were the only aspect of the book that was terrible, it'd be enough for me to be wary. I wouldn't completely dismiss it per se. But this book's core characters also leave a hell of a lot to be desired. Nora was particularly flat, presented as a doting, constantly gasping (or "amazed" or "spellbound" or "captivated") waif who's in love with McGrath by the end despite him treating her like dogshit. Scott's initial description of her is spot on. She does not become anything more than what he assumed her to be. Her moving out is prompted by Scott's rejection of her literal declaration of love. That's not character development, friendo. (How in the fuck was this written by a woman??? The internalized misogyny is STRONG with this one!)
I could go on (for a very long time). Like I haven't even mentioned the multitude of cavernous plotholes in this book that clearly prides itself in meticulous plotting (HOW DOES "DISGRACED JOURNALIST SCOTT MCGRATH" HAVE UNLIMITED FUNDS??!). Or the fanboy-level ~auteurs-can-save-the-world~ hero worship on display (we get it, you like Hitchcock). Or the completely illogical behavior of almost every random side character (lol! the pseudo-priest admitting to pedophilia! wtf!). Or the excruciating self-importance of the prose and themes (although to classify whatever this book was going for as "themes" is giving it too much credit). But I've already spent far too much time with this word vomit, and I need to scrub it from my psyche as soon as possible.
Needless to say, I'm not going to read Special Topics, and my lukewarm opinion of [b:Neverworld Wake|36545927|Neverworld Wake|Marisha Pessl|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1517426178l/36545927._SY75_.jpg|56878900] has been tainted by this utter garbage.
Graphic: Body shaming, Confinement, Death, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Transphobia, and Violence