Reviews with content warning for Blood - Big Swiss

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

122 reviews

skateybarb's review against another edition

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dark funny medium-paced

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

3.75

I liked the writing style, managed to read this quickly

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nettles's review against another edition

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dark funny sad medium-paced

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

4.5

To my three friends on this app, knowing you I do not recommend this book as a headsup.

You know that meme that's like "I don't stop at women's rights. I also support women's wrongs." Well that's this book

This book is a trainwreck you can't look away from. People with deep seated trauma coping extremely badly in different and completely disastrous ways.

The prose is witty, sometimes beautiful and sometimes viscerally disgusting. The main relationship is not romantic in the slightest and even somewhat worrying. I had no idea where the book would go.

Oddly leaves off on an anticlimactic ending that I felt I didn't understand. But otherwise very memorable and I love a good psychological analysis of a messed up character

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lauraportalupi's review against another edition

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emotional funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes

4.75

I loved listening to the audio book version — usually I’m not a fan of audio books but this one was great.

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silver_lining_in_a_book's review against another edition

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dark funny slow-paced

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

1.0

Greta considered her own behaviour around red flags. Her habit was not to ignore them so much as to ingest them, a somewhat laborious mental production that involved placing them in a stockpot with butter, herbs, and mirepoix; cooking over low heat without browning; adding red meat, additional red flags, a jug of red wine; and voilà, four hours at a lazy simmer later, an extremely rich red-flag stew that she forked into her mouth every day like a fucking moron, sometimes for years on end.

Oh no... I hate to do this but I should have seen the signs when in the first few pages we were making horribly racist comments (particularly about Japanese and Chinese people), making fun of anorexics (trigger warnings would have been appreciated) and strangely glamorising suicide.

I had such high expectations for this book! It had so much potential when it came to humorously discussing some very morbid and taboo topics but instead, it turned into a very uncomfortable semi-erotic, semi-thriller novel. It failed at the thrill, it failed at the romance, it failed at the eroticism and it did not even begin the discussion of important topics like relationships, infidelity, suicide, depression, therapy and trauma.

I am not sure I have ever given a book 1 star, but there is a first time for everything and I believe it is well deserved in this case. The 1 star is being awarded solely to the beautiful US cover and its designer; it's the only thing Big Swiss has going for it. I am so incredibly thankful I decided to check this out of the library because I would have probably torn the sex-scene pages out if it were my own copy... they were so unpleasant to read. Not to mention that I am generally fine with erotic scenes! I will never be able to get the image of a slightly moist origami rose between a woman's peach-fuzz-covered legs out of my head. Thank you, Jen Beagin, for making me hate both origami and peaches now (though the latter was ruined by Call Me By Your Name a while ago).

Anyway, I somewhat regret pushing through this sorry excuse for literature, but at least I can confidently say that it sucked and I truly truly TRULY do not understand the hype here... how many trees have been sacrificed for this exactly? I would like to petition for their restoration; they didn't deserve this.

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katierosecrane's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book is weird as hell. But I loved it. The plot is set up to go in a million different directions and I had to read each word to understand what the hell Greta was saying.

There were parts where I was confused about where it was going. Those were the parts that were harder to get through. But this book is made for all weirdos out there.

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