Reviews with content warning for Blood - NOS4A2: Nosferatu

Loved it. Wild ride from start to finish. Going into the book I expected it to be about a vampire, given the title, but I didn’t expect the type of vampire I received. Insanely creative work of fiction with fun easter eggs to King’s work in the latter half of the book.

I think one of my favorite parts, was the clever call-out to Chekov’s Gun. Maggie having the paperweight gun was one thing, but when she told 14-year-old Vic about the “escape route” from the library (and Vic rightly saying “why would I ever need to get out of here in a hurry), I never would’ve expected that line to pay-off in the final chapters. The paperweight served as a great reminder that if a gun is shown in act 1, it better go off by the end of the story— and boy did it go off.

Great book.

Content Warnings

jessicalarson125's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

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

2.5

This book was long. Honestly… I was bored a lot of the time. It felt extremely wordy and not in a good way, like I feel like half of the novel could have been cut out and it would have still had the same story and achieved the same effect, just more concisely.

The first 1/4 ish was interesting, and I was intrigued about where the story would go. The middle 1/2 seemed to drag on and on and on and I wasn’t enjoying any of the characters or their decisions or motivations. The last 1/4 got my attention again. But when we’re talking about a nearly 1000 page book (~20 hour audiobook), for around half of it to be laggy, that’s a lot of time and energy that I felt was wasting my time.

BUT HONESTLY — the worst part for me was the fact that this novel was an obvious and glaring example of men writing female characters. This is a literal quote from the book in the perspective of one of the main characters, a woman:

Men, she thought, were one of the world's few sure comforts, like a fire on a cold October night, like cocoa, like broken-in-slippers. Their clumsy affections, their bristly faces, and their willingness to do what needed to be done - cook an omelette, change lightbulbs, make with hugging - sometimes almost made being a woman fun.

It’s so completely tone deaf to the actual overall experience of being a woman that it took me right out of the story, I actually let out a startled laugh and rewound the audio to make sure I heard correctly. I probably should’ve taken it as a sign when the same female main character, as a teenage virgin, wanted to get a tattoo of a motorcycle engine on her chest to “let the boys know what a good ride she was.”

Overall:
Audio: 5/5, the narrator was incredible, she was literally the only thing that made this book not feel like a waste of my time
Characters: 2.5/5, I didn’t really like any of them tbh and I’ve already discussed my issues with the women
Plot: 2.5/5, I actually had more issues with the plot besides that it felt way too drawn out (in my opinion). The concept of the “real” world versus the imaginary (“inscape”) world was fascinating. It was also an interesting take on vampires and I thought that was really clever. It just kind of felt like there were a lot of revolving parts that made the story overly convoluted.

Also, I’m a medical professional and some of the medical/injury/surgical (especially) aspects of this book lowkey pissed me off haha

~~~~~~~~~

halfway update: I’m bored. Idk I just don’t really care about any of the characters and this book is SO long. I for sure would have given up a long time ago except that the audiobook narrator is FANTASTIC.

And like, by no means would I consider myself a prude but there are just so many gratuitous and crude mentions of genitalia (the same issue I have with King’s work) and like oh my god, we get it, you’re obsessed with “mommy tits” but we don’t need to hear it again!!! And again!!! And again!!!

Also I feel like at this point if I’m reading a horror novel and there’s a dog in it, I should just dnf. I’m sick of the dog dying in overly graphic and disgusting ways. Especially when half the time it doesn’t even do anything for the plot. But as soon as that dog dies the book is like immediately a 3 star (or less) read for me lol.

Content Warnings

hkveit's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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spookybenji's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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sberry225's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

3.75

This book was like a fever dream. Joe Hill has an amazing ability to transport you to the past and present with the intricate descriptions and details. I feel while this book got off to a slower start, it really takes the time to build the characters and then the climax hits and you're fully invested. The villains were HORRIFYING as well. Check trigger warnings!

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brookey8888's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.75

This was good, but a little too long that I felt some parts dragged. I thought the concept was interesting, but I do personally wish that it was as supernatural as it was. This didn’t really creep me out and there was only like two or three kind of gross moments ( mostly relating to Bing). A lot of the characters were actually really funny. I also didn’t really love the ending to be honest.

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louiepotterbook's review against another edition

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I was too stressed and looked up what happened which made me angry

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