Reviews tagging 'Car accident'

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

12 reviews

bababookmatt's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

This is a character driven book. The protagonist, Judas Coyne, is an aging, pessimistic, misogynistic rock star. Not a character that typically elicits sympathy for me. However, behind the plot we do see growth, and by the end he calls the women he dates by their name, and not just the American state he met them in. Without loving him, he felt real, and earned my respect. The relationship dynamics are excellent. The horror component was a little ho-hum; a ghost haunting. Judas and his entourage are being haunted by a ghost and Hill doesn’t waste time convincing the reader it’s a haunting as opposed to mental illness, natural phenomena, etc. I appreciated this. It’s established and not something that needs doubting or suspicion. There’s a snuff film that Judas owns that is very unsettling, and while it’s mentioned a few times, I struggle with finding how it fits in to the larger story. This didn’t bother me, but I found it to be a loose end.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Drug abuse, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Rape, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Self harm, Violence, Abandonment, Child abuse, Suicide, Car accident, Death of parent, Drug use, Sexual assault, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship

outofthepinksky's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Medical trauma, Pedophilia, Rape, Blood, Self harm, Child abuse, Death, Gore, Violence, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Fatphobia, Suicide, Animal death, Drug use, Gun violence, Domestic abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Gaslighting, Cursing, and Death of parent

raginsagein's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense medium-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

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse and Mental illness

Moderate: Pedophilia, Sexual violence, and Animal death

Minor: Car accident and Emotional abuse

jaedia's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Incest, Medical content, Animal death, Suicide, Violence, Sexual assault, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gore, Gaslighting, Death, Blood, Self harm, and Gun violence

Moderate: Vomit, Adult/minor relationship, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Murder, Pedophilia, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Alcohol, Car accident, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Abandonment, and Incest

verbosevespertine's review against another edition

dark reflective 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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Blood, Car accident, Child abuse, and Suicide

va1entine's review against another edition

dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

this book was a series of ups and downs. at some parts, i was hooked, unable to stop reading; at others, it was a chore to keep going. while i enjoyed the dedication to detail, the book felt too long somehow, though i don’t know what would’ve been cut. i do think the author did a decent job tying up loose ends at the conclusion of the book. 
i found jude hard to root for at times, and i didn’t care one way or another what happened to him. i rooted for marybeth solely because i wanted her to be happy. everything else was sort of a crapshoot. there were a few poignant moments, and i enjoyed the moments where marybeth and jude actually were talking about their feelings—you can see the traces of genuine connection and affection for one another. the characters were given stories intended to give them depth but the stories did not really show beyond when they were mentioned. overall, 3.5/5. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Suicide, and Gun violence

Moderate: Child abuse, Sexual assault, Blood, Death, Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Car accident, Pedophilia, and Toxic relationship

poptartsicle's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Death, Gaslighting, Suicide, Pedophilia, Car accident, Animal death, Suicide attempt, and Sexual violence

goblinghost_39's review against another edition

dark emotional medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cursing, Death, Child abuse, Gore, Suicide, Sexual assault, Car accident, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Blood, and Murder

morganpearcy's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

0.5

I am a horror fan. I hated this book pretty much from start to finish. It is very obvious that the author is attempting throw in a lot of big, scary, challenging and shocking topics to make the book seem complex and dark - but that’s all a mask for 1 and 2 dimensional characters and an author who lacks the imagination and lived experience to give the story any real depth. It was as if the author watched some Law and Order Special Victims Unit episodes and decided one night to sit down and write what is, in essence, a toxic cishet masc hero fantasy - in response. There’s a lot of potential in the overall theme and plot but it just never reached any sort of maturity and completely missed the mark.

Let me explain. 

Things I enjoyed about the book: 

• There’s an unexpected twist.
• It’s a quick read.
• The scene where Anna yanks on Jude’s beard when he asks a dumbass question about why she thought beards were a liability in a fight.
• There’s an attempt (albeit inadequate) at a feel-good ending. 

Things I hated about the book:

• The ‘torture’ psychological, physical, etc was unimaginative, lacked creativity and was too phallic. Stop regurgitating TV show tropes and give us something real from your own darkness, dear author! 
• From page 10, I was rooting for the ghost and was thinking it would be a nice story to read where the universe can meet out some justice. I was looking forward to Jude’s death with some serious bloodlust. But no - about 2/3 of the way through there’s a twist and guess what?
  BOTH the ghost and the main character are, you guessed it - toxic freaking cishet men. There IS no one to root for.
  The women characters are woefully underdeveloped with zero personalities and I couldn’t root for any of them, either. This isn’t an antihero situation. The author is simply completely inadequate in attempting to make Jude a whole character. Read on for an explanation cuz I promised myself some bullet points.
• The main character is underdeveloped and there are a lot of distracting incongruencias.
  We jump from the intro of Jude as an eccentric musician with a flair for the macabre to Jude as caring but detached lover of barely-adult women to Jude as victim of childhood abuse to Jude as a dog lover who treats his pack like royalty, then back to Jude smashing piglets’ heads against the cement or shooting them with guns to live out a fantasy of patricide and focusing on how the pig’s heads sounded “like watermelons being smashed,” to defender of sexually abused women?! Then to man who would let their royal doggies be in pain in the back seat after having their legs smashed??
  None of this did anything to develop the character. You can’t include those kinds of details without some development. Yet, the author wanted to see what stuck and threw everything at the wall when it came to Jude.
• It’s not the point of the book, but the author simply doesn’t have the emotional scope, maturity or lived experience to write women SA survivors with any sort of depth or believability. Enough so that it’s distracting.
  Like when Jude beats up Mary Beth’s childhood sexual abuser and Mary Beth comes back to the car and becomes physically affectionate with Jude right off the bat. I can’t speak for every SA Survivor - but I am a Survivor myself. All of the women in my life are SA Survivors excepting ONE. And I have NEVER seen that response from an actual survivor upon seeing their abuser. Especially for someone so young, who hasn’t gotten help. That response wasn’t realistic. It simply played into Jude’s toxic masc hero fantasy and what the author obviously thinks people WANT to see. When in reality it was so distractingly incongruous it made me want to plot the author’s actual murder.
  It was as if the author, recent to writing the book, had a woman or woman-aligning person in his life reveal that they’re an SA Survivor, he fantasized about his response in his head and then had to find a place to slap that into a story somewhere cuz he’s justice-impotent.
• Again, the portrayal of women in general really exposes this author’s own implicit bias. I sincerely hope he doesn’t have a daughter. I don’t want to google it and find out. I’ll just hold on to hope.
• The ending was lackluster. Really,
  both Jude and the ghost should have died. Terrible, awful deaths. The only satisfying ending would have been Mary Beth riding off into the sunset, free of Jude and at peace with her freedom and ready to get some life experience so she doesn’t make the same mistakes shacking up with toxic cishet men again.

In the end, this would have been much better as a short story culminating in several bloody deaths across the board. This was NOT a satisfying read. It wasn’t triggering. It wasn’t disturbing. It was like reading a teenage boy’s post-SVU fantasy stretched thin like butter scraped over too much bread. Go elsewhere for your horror fix. This ain’t it. .5⭐️ for potential that was never realized. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Blood, Car accident, Child abuse, Addiction, Gaslighting, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Vomit, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Fatphobia, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Suicide attempt, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, and Toxic friendship

stephanieluxton's review against another edition

dark sad medium-paced

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

3.5

This book really isn't what I thought it'd be. I didn't find it scary but I did find it reasonably stressful. It's essentially about a man who becomes haunted by a ghost and sets out to uncover the truth about the haunting and find a way to free himself of it. There's some really excellent character development and I do like the story unfolded in a way I didn't expect. The story had a medium pace. I think it would have been better if it was either a fast paced thriller or if it was more of a slow burn horror that built a sense of dread. The second half of the book is better than the first!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death of parent, Suicide attempt, Animal death, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Sexual content, Gaslighting, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide

Moderate: Child abuse, Toxic relationship, Pedophilia, Panic attacks/disorders, Drug use, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Car accident, Mental illness, and Alcohol

Minor: Infidelity, Sexual assault, Homophobia, and Incest

There are two graphic dog deaths in which injuries are fairly detailed. The antagonist in the book tries many times to make the protagonists kill themselves or eachother via hypnosis. It's also revealed later that he used hypnosis on his stepdaughter so she wouldn't remember him sexually assaulting her. Sexual assault of minors is another theme throughout the book although it's not described in detail.