Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - The Circle

Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

The Circle by Mats Strandberg, Sara Bergmark Elfgren

7 reviews

catommy17's review against another edition

I have a lot to say about the book I couldn't even finish. The feeling I had the entire time I was reading it, was intense anxiety. Yet i was stubborn and couldn't put the book and I wish I did. I also would like to have a physical copy of the book so I could tear it into small pieces and then burn those pieces and then send the ashes back to authors, because even the nuclear waste dumpsite is not enough the remnants of the book.

The authors exploit trauma, adding everything for shock value. This book has, like, dozens characters and none of them is okay. If you have certain triggers as a reader, prepare to encounter them described very graphically. I mean, the book literally opens up with

suicide of one of the students

. Every family is dysfunctional, except for, I guess, Minoo's. Some of the scenes are simply gut-wrenching and tragic. I grew up in a rural town, I moved to the rural town and it's never been as messed up as this book.

One moment you will have compassion for characters, another moment they will say or do something so effed up and abhorrent you will never want to pick up the book ever again. Minoo and Rebecca are the only decent people among the bunch. It was refreshing to read about Minoo whose parents are not assholes for a change, you know? I should have dropped this book

when Rebecca died

. And it was done just for shock value. I sympathized with Anna-Karin up until the party scene...because that was so messed up and sick that I dropped the book shortly after that. Linnea and Vanessa were...mildly effed up, I guess? So much impact was put on their sexuality/promiscuity that I started to feel that they are written for some fans of barely legal. Especially that scene with Jonte. It was unnecessary. It added nothing, absolutely nothing to the plot. I don't understand why Ida was included, she's vile, she's hardly involved into anything the girls do and the only thing that's good about her is that

she apparently dies in the next book

We get it, characters are broken and traumatized. Now can we get at least something nice without it being destroyed?

For whom this book was written? I think harsher readers won't pick up the book made for teens. And more sensitive to triggers readers will feel as bad as I did. This is basically trauma porn.

Oh, yeah, it was supposed to be about witches or something. Not much of that stuff in the book. It could have been the book about serial killer and nothing would have changed.

Content Warnings