Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung

46 reviews

sakisreads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

✨ Thrifted ✨

What a series of short stories! I’m skeptical of BookTok recommendations, so it took me a little while to buy this, but when I saw a pristine copy at the secondhand bookshop I knew I had to at least try. I’m so glad I did! 😳 

I’m squeamish at the best of times, but the imagery in this didn’t make me squirm (most of the time). I thought the ways in which the stories were written were so crystal clear. I kept putting it down, to absorb each story, then picking it back up almost immediately after because I was excited to keep going and was keen to get onto the next ✨

Here are my personal opinions:

Favourite: Cursed Bunny (the image of bunnies chewing everything and shitting everywhere made me laugh 😂)

Least favourite: Snare (the imagery in this one was a bit too intense for me)

Honourable mentions:

Goodbye, My Love (I love an AI/Klara and the Sun moment 😦)

I’ve already recommended this surreal and wonderful short story collection to my friend 🥰 I can’t wait to read more reviews 👏🏼

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood, Body horror, Incest, Vomit, Physical abuse, Animal cruelty, Violence, Child abuse, and Death

_rowan_'s review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Murder, Pregnancy, Rape, Child abuse, Medical content, Medical trauma, Sexual assault, Blood, Confinement, Death, Physical abuse, Miscarriage, Vomit, Gore, Torture, and Violence

lucacul's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cannibalism, Physical abuse, Violence, and Animal death

sevensableyes's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.25

I really enjoyed this book. It's convinced me to start looking into short story collections. I wasn't expecting the stories to be so creepy, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. There was a wide range of settings. I do think 'Cursed Bunny' was the most memorable.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Physical abuse, and Emotional abuse

Moderate: Incest, Cannibalism, and Suicide

There are quite a few content warnings, I'm not sure I can recall them all. Definitely body horror, abuse, incest, and character death. I think there was a suicide?

ellinda's review against another edition

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

It might be harsh, but the stories in this book al felt like they could have been written by your average literature student who wanted to write something edgy and shocking. None of the stories stood out to me in the "genre-defying" way they had been described everywhere. 

It was very difficult for me to get through the stories and after the first 2 I wanted to give up, but I felt like I needed to give the other stories a chance because in a short story bundle you're always bound to have ones you like and ones you dislike. 

For me, the only two redeeming stories in this book were the ones titled "Goodbye, my love" and "Reunion". But ever the former of those two felt very predictable without bringing anything new to the table. 

It seems a lot of people liked this book just fine, but to me personally it delivered on none of the promises people had made about the book. The stories are not "sick and twisted" and they don't bring anything new to the types of stories they are telling. It had poor prose and some of the writing just felt immature. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Confinement, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Excrement, Death of parent, Child abuse, Violence, Torture, Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Child death

Moderate: Suicide

caitlindoesntread's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.25

(Short story collection (10 stories): Horror, social commentary) Read this in four days. It possibly damaged me forever?? Some of the body horror descriptions are so grotesque that I literally felt sick. However, lots of the stories were written beautifully and at each twist I found myself pausing to think about the metaphorical implications or what real-life issue it could have been representing against the backdrop of a strange, scary, magical and suspenseful reality. Some of the stories I really enjoyed are "The Head, "The embodiment", The Frozen Finger" and "Snare". These were short, to the point and gripped me throughout the story. Some stories that I really did not enjoy were "Goodbye, my love", "Home sweet home" and "Ruler of the winds and sands. For the last two that I mentioned, I literally had no clue what was going on, especially in "Ruler of the winds and sands" and they were long, boring and repetitive. I neither liked nor disliked "Cursed bunny", "Scars" and "The reunion". Although "Scars" was WAY too long.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, Grief, Incest, Kidnapping, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Self harm, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Torture, Violence, and Vomit

Moderate: Alcoholism, Antisemitism, Sexual content, Addiction, Alcohol, Car accident, Drug use, Infidelity, and War

honeyvoiced's review against another edition

dark sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, and Torture

Moderate: Vomit, Ableism, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Confinement, Mental illness, Incest, and Suicide

chocolate_pondue's review against another edition

I'm not a general fan of horror so I don't think I was the right audience for this book. A lot of the stories seem gratuitous and a few of them I didn't truly understand. There were a couple that hit me emotionally (

The one with the blood-clot baby, the one with the boy and the crow monster, and the one with the androids

), but other than that, I just became uninterested in it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Violence, Torture, Kidnapping, Animal cruelty, Suicide, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Incest, Animal death, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Excrement, Death, Sexual assault, Mental illness, Grief, and Child abuse

magnoliophyta's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.5

This earth we’re currently living in is harsh for women, ya. Particularly for women who live in patriarchal countries with misogyny lingers around the society. 

Some of the stories were heavily themed, disturbing and dark. Not quite enjoyed it myself because of the graphic (gory) details but I wanted to assure you that the writing style itself was a little bit like folklore/myth and you’re going to like it if you like retelling/folklore/myth. Smoothly flowed plots that I couldn’t bring myself to stop despite the uneasiness and distress I’d felt while reading. 

Buddy reading this with Nabilla and well I could say that we’ve got so many interpretations of the stories (even one story had more than 3 interpretations!) we could turn it into a whole essay, a messy and long one at that lol. 

“There was nothing left for me to wait for.

But there I remained, standing in his bathroom, waiting for someone to miraculously find me, to release me from my ties to this life.”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Sexual content, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Murder, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, and Incest

laurenvoice's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

3.0

Cursed Bunny is a short story collection that somewhat resembles the Twilight Zone.

The Head ⭐⭐.5 - I was not quite sure what to make of this story. I neither liked nor disliked this story; I left it feeling indifferent. However, I have questions about how unconcerned the family was about this head randomly appearing.

The Embodiment ⭐⭐⭐.5 - okay, wow that ending! This story was full of judgmental people judging a situation that had nothing to do with them. Also, whilst reading this story, I realised that no one in this Twilight Zone themed book questions anything!

Cursed Bunny ⭐⭐⭐ - this one had quite a slow start. However, it picked up the pace during the curse part, although the ending to the curse part was quite rushed. The ending to the story seemed meh.

The Frozen Finger ⭐⭐⭐ - this story was a mix of being predictable yet having no clue what was happening. There are a lot of questions.

Snare ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - I liked this one a lot. It was gory and weird, which is right up my street.

Goodbye, My Love ⭐⭐ - stories about AI aren't really my sort of thing.

Scars ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5 - this is my favourite story in this short story collection. I found this story engrossing and sad. However, I did find the ending a bit weird; nonetheless, I loved the rest of the story.

Home Sweet Home ⭐⭐.5 - not sure what was going on here; it felt like a haunted house story.

Ruler of the Winds and Sands ⭐⭐⭐ - again, this was not really my type of story. However, the imagery used in this story was good.

Reunion ⭐⭐⭐ - this was a ghost story with quite the ending.

Overall, I did enjoy this collection of short stories. Bora Chung tackled the darker themes of her story well and included some beautiful imagery that set the scenes in some of these stories.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Physical abuse, Slavery, Self harm, Suicide, Torture, Trafficking, and Excrement