Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

400 reviews

ashely_56's review

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

This books was as lyrical as it was heart wrenching. This memoir is a very raw and personality story of one woman experiences in an abusive. Yet it's not the stereotypical domestic abuse as her abuser was her girlfriend.

This book dives deeping in the nuances of their relationship and explain how queer must have the space to be nuances and un heroic. This story of abuse within queer love, demonstrates just how deeply human these relationship are and how woman are just as likely to be abusers as men.


Carmen is an incredible writer her prose entranced and pulled me deep into her mind. I highly recommend the audio as it is recorded by the author herself. 

Like poetry this is a story that demands me be heard out loud as well as read.

She explores with us throughout the story the pain of loving someone who harms you, and even emphasizing and pitying  her abuser.

As she knows that she was not born this way but rather made into an abuser by her painful upbringing.

This book holds your attention from the prologue to the epilogue. 

For anyone who as every been harms by those who were meant to make you feel safe. This is the book for you!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse and Emotional abuse

Moderate: Cursing, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Suicidal thoughts, Religious bigotry, Lesbophobia, and Gaslighting

Minor: Bullying, Drug use, Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Vomit, and Grief

adaminmelrose's review

challenging dark emotional informative tense fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Biphobia, Body shaming, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Fatphobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Grief, and Gaslighting

aprilamadon's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Domestic abuse, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship

priscillas's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

4.5

I loved the prose and writing style. Machado does an excellent job of casting light on a topic that is not given much of a stage. There were moments when I audibly gasped and screamed! I was hooked from the first few pages. This is a heavy read, though. I think I’m going to need a mental health break for my next book.

Lastly, this took incredible strength, courage and vulnerability for Machado to write this and release it to the world. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting

infidelt's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

2.75

I'm reading this book for school. I love the stylistic choices that the author makes - truly, they're remarkably creative. I appreciate that the author shares her experience with lesbian domestic abuse, something that is rarely written about. While it is a heavy topic, the author lands her humor where the levity is needed. I wished it were shorter and more focused, i.e. fewer "Dream House as..." chapters. Also I'm not a fan of graphic sexual content in books - I would never obstruct it, but it's just something I prefer to pass on. I will say though that said content is never gratuitous. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Domestic abuse

sophia_t_s's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse and Sexual content

kikireads1232's review

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

I think this is a great nonfiction book, but is a deeply impersonal memoir. I do think that is the point, to be more approachable to people who don't commonly read nonfiction, but it didn't really work fully for me. It was written a lot like a horror book, and while I enjoyed that aspect, it left me wanting for more input by the author. I still feel like I know so little about Machado despite reading her memoir, and while there are a lot of parts of the book that are incredibly personal, they are few in this book.

That isn't to say this is a bad book, it isn't, it just left me wanting for a book that felt like an actual memoir, that felt like someone baring their heart to me, and that just didn't happen here. That being said, it's still an amazing book, even if it wasn't what I personally wanted. It's written beautifully and has some really heart breaking insights, as well as some interesting parts of queer history on domestic abuse I haven't heard about, it made me wish there was more writing on the topic. I'd love to read a history on lesbian abuse if such thing where were exist. While a lot of her life is glossed over, the parts we do get are interesting, even if i wished she went a little deeper, and I did tear up at some parts. It also had really great quotes and I think it's a perfect book for someone who just got out of an abusive relationship and is deprogramming from it all

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Sexual assault, and Sexual content

Moderate: Racism and Sexual harassment

Minor: Blood and Vomit

shelleyreadsbooks's review

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

5.0

This. Book. Is. Hard.
This book is necessary.
I have been putting off reading this book until I was read. I wasn't read. I don't know that I will ever be ready.
I have never read a book that so captured what being emotionally abused does to your existence in the world. 
This book is necessary.
This. Book. Is. Hard.

I wish this book wasn't necessary.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Mental illness, Physical abuse, and Sexual content

katbotelho's review

challenging dark reflective fast-paced

3.5

wasn’t expecting a book about an abusive relationship to be so beautifully written

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Homophobia, Sexual content, and Lesbophobia

Minor: Fatphobia

mary_wyrd's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

In the Dream House you are a prisoner to your own heart; trapped, wanting to leave. But you can't, because the house is part of you now, a house that haunts. A dream that became a nightmare. This memoir is part exorcism part rebellion and a full-throated yell against the tyranny of abuse. Machado's full range of creativity is used in excising this chapter of her life and analysing its impact. The format is inventive. Each section is told in a different genre style or trope. Each section is also short, like a glimpse through the windows of the Dream House, seeing a tense, intense relationship from various angles, before the curtains are drawn. Many chapters are told in second person present tense, placing you in the author's position, living through that relationship.  You are both victim and witness. You are Machado. You are all the women in this position who couldn't get out until they did - fatally or finally free. This is a personal study of abuse with reflections on how society has historically treated both lesbians in love and lesbians in abusive situations; with silence, disgust and distrust.  In the Dream House as personal journey is certain to join the canon of lesbian non-fiction exploring love and loathing within a lesbian context.  In the Dream House as memoir already plays a part in unravelling the lie that women can't abuse other women. They can, and those abused need to be believed.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Confinement, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Infidelity, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Lesbophobia, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Alcohol