Reviews with content warning for Rape - Penance

Reviews tagging 'Rape'

abi_lamb19's review

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.25

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rilakkumas's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

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audreybethc's review against another edition

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dark sad fast-paced

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

4.0

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enkiiii's review against another edition

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dark tense

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

this book is so good. very shrewd and nuanced commentary on the ethics of true crime. and an “emotionally truthful” (as per the story’s fictional writer Alec Z. Carelli) depiction of what it’s like to be a teenager, and how that formative and often traumatic experience gets trivialized by adults until, well, somebody gets murdered. it was a difficult though entertaining read. and there’s a fun bit of metafiction in the end.

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ermw0's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

The rare book where I am hooked by the premise, and then completely sold after the first page. I didn't want to look away while also feeling revulsion for the characters and their awful awful ways. God, how I do not miss being a teenage girl. I thought this was an effective commentary on the true crime fandom, as well as those Tumblr girlies who obsess over real serial killers. This book is graphic, infuriating, scary, repulsive, and addicting. Both a rebuke of the true crime genre and sort of a perfect example how you can create this type of gripping story without exploiting real people and their tragedies. As someone who fell off of true crime simply because of how slimy it made me feel consuming the grief of real people, this was the book that gave me everything I wanted and spoke to some of my own feelings.

Eliza Clark is now an author who I will read anything she writes.

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opldxblqo's review

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dark medium-paced

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

4.0

I am exactly the demographic for this book: late 20s white woman who spent considerable time on Tumblr in the early 2010s; this book would have fallen short if not for lighting up the teenage nostalgia centers of my brain with its references to the edgy internet culture of my morbid youth (No, I wasn't ever in a serial killer fandom, but I ate up true crime and occasionally looked at "pro ana" blogs with a horrified outsider's fascination). Any reader who missed out on the absolute chum bucket that was Tumblr in the early 2010s (lucky you!) will likely be bored by large chunks of this book.
Despite its heavy reliance on niche internet nostalgia, what Clark gets right in Penance is the critical look at the culture of violence entertainment in true crime media. Penance asks readers to look inward at their rubber-necking voyeurism without scolding; asks readers to question the motives of true crime content creators, and understand that this content more often than not retraumatizes victims' families. Though this exact critique has been explored many times through fiction in the last couple of years in novels such as I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (blah), and Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll (five starts!), Penance does so much more thoroughly through the use of metanarrative. The sections of prose are well written and each character feels fully fleshed and complex; a delightful surprise after Clark's disappointing first novel, Boy Parts.

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