Reviews with content warning for Violence - Geisterwand

Interesting narrative style. The continuous (almost stream of consciousness) narration kinda reminded me of José Saramago’s writing style, because it doesn’t use any paragraph breaks or punctuation other than commas and periods. Although it did make my understanding of the story sometimes a little more complicated (especially in the dialogue bits, where I had trouble figuring out who exactly was talking), I think it was a great choice for this type of story. The author did an amazing job in completely immersing the reader in the story, and the non stop narration as well as the fact we were in the main character’s head the whole time (which came with the full set of her trauma induced biases) served to create a tense, unsettling, borderline claustrophobic feeling that fit the themes and the mood of the story perfectly. That said, this isn’t the type of fun, engaging read to let go for a while, it comes with a load of trigger warnings and the whole thing is about dark and disturbing themes.

I can’t say I “enjoyed” this because it was honestly kind of disturbing, but it was definitely an interesting reading experience and the author is clearly very talented. I simply cannot give more than 4 stars to something that so disturbed me, but that’s not a fault of the book itself, just a personal preference/subjective reading experience thing.

Content Warnings

kyra_pc's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.75

this book was incredible. Slow start but its so worth it. Gripping and disturbing, the ending was totally wild and so horrifying (in a good way?). the misogyny throughout made me want to puke but thats kinda the point. I could not stop thinking about this book for days afterwards!!

Content Warnings

madarauchiha's review against another edition

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dark 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

0.25

✨🌠 my about / byf / CW info carrd: uchiha-madara 🌠✨

What a tedious novella. This isn't horror. Not, like, paranormal or supernatural or anything horror genre. This is more literary than anything else. I read it by rapidly flipping through the pages and gleaning the general plot. Took, like, 10 minutes to 'read'.

It's a story about abuse of power and misogyny and sexism. Boring, full offense, and the lack of apostrophes and indications of speech is extremely irritating to me. [Placeholder for a go fund me link to buy the author some apostrophes and periods.]

Also the lgbt rep? Nonexistent. Oh you get a flacid, pure wholesome [slur intended] white bread version of a girl having a crush on another girl. Thats it. At times I think authors just throw in a splash of lgbt rep just to claim its 'diverse' and thus becomes harder to criticize because 'omg, are you homophobic? you don't like a book with gay people in it? smh, you're horrrible!!'

A better review of this novella by someone else is here

https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/e2283c59-2dd4-4b97-bfdf-fb4f09469f0b

content warnings

major classism, toxic relationships, domestic abuse, victim blaming, gore, animal death, death, child abuse, violence, misogyny,

medium injuries, blood, animal death,

minor whorephobic language,

Content Warnings