Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

3 reviews

miachimochi's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Murder, Sexual content, Self harm, Death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Pedophilia, Suicide attempt, Sexual assault, Child abuse, Child death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Sexual violence, Medical content, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Car accident, Cursing, Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, and Drug use

Minor: Adult/minor relationship and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

shieldbearer's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

Rating memoirs always feels strange to me, but this is not a pure memoir, this is also a nonfictional account, and it is on those grounds I find fault. I am aware the author says upfront that several events around the events of the Langley trial/murder are composite, compressed or otherwise altered, but frankly I deeply disliked the aspect where the author is clearly ascribing and assuming the thought processes of the real people involved in this. "[y person] MUST HAVE [felt/thought z thing]" got extremely, tediously old. It also got irritating when the author frequently ascribed personalities and descriptions onto people we could get only glimpses from fact. Why is every person we have such glimpses of imagined by the author to be young and naive?? I would much have preferred a straight forward account of all the contradictions and complexities, even if it was more complicated. The writing is beautiful but I couldn't get past the framing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Rape, Grief, Drug abuse, Child death, Alcohol, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Incest, Gaslighting, Eating disorder, Drug use, Death of parent, Death, Emotional abuse, Body shaming, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual assault, Pedophilia, Murder, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Cursing, and Child abuse

samchase112's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

Damn. The Fact of a Body is an extremely powerful book about deeply disturbing and difficult topics. Marzano-Lesnevich's writing is so compelling and they weave the story together so incredibly well; each scene, each word, was so carefully chosen. I won't lie, this is not an easy book to read -- there is something horrible happening on seemingly every page. All I can say is that I loved and hated every second in almost equal measure.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Pedophilia, Rape, Suicide attempt, Medical content, Incest, Grief, Eating disorder, Death, Child death, Child abuse, Car accident, and Adult/minor relationship

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Sexual content, and Blood

Minor: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, and Drug use