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Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

Le Dieu des Bois by Liz Moore

130 reviews

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

oof, this book is sad. like deep dark in the woods, generations rotting from the inside out, girls still struggling to be themselves sad. 

I was riveted from the get-go and thoroughly enjoyed the plot throughout the book. I also appreciated the range of characters introduced throughout the book with one notable exception. I wish there had been more attention placed on the people of Shattock. Other than that, I thought they were are all very true to their time, place, wealth, education and upbringing. 

The predictability that some lament in this book is the patriarchy. The patriarchy enacts itself in predictable ways because it works. It's not Moore's fault that patriarchal societies do what they do; her book was literally about the way the patriarchy ruined or harmed the majority of women in the book.

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mysterious reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

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dark sad tense slow-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

This is very good, but I did not enjoy it. I think somehow the literary thriller thing veered into something so slow that it often felt preachy and pedantic, endless, often incredibly pretentious somehow. The writing is good: the setting is definitely captivating and vivid; the characters are compelling, even as they are basically all pretty awful. I guess for me a cast of totally awful characters (whether in books or TV shows) never feels satisfying — so I may simply not be the reader for this. But I will say that this book felt interminable to me, almost from the beginning (I definitely should have DNFed, but it’s gotten so much praise from people I trust that I expected it to turn around into something miraculous! It did not, for me). The pace is so unbelievably slow, the timelines and POVs so sprawling — these are things (even a slow pace!) that I actually usually love in a book, but that felt like such a drag here, I think because the motivations of every person aroused so little sympathy and investment. Certainly others may not feel this way.

I will say that I somehow loved the ending, and found it so beautiful, with such a light touch — odd after this book that felt so heavy-handed to me. It was absolutely not worth it for me but I somehow was still quite enchanted by it even as I was so ready to be done. So the writing is definitely remarkable in some way, even though for me this is not going to be a writer I return to again.

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The first 4/5 of this book was so slow, boring, and somehow alot of it was in no way important. I don't understand why we were told the story of Alice, but only teeny tiny bits from HER perspective. 
(I'm going to immediately contradict my last statement) Maybe the writer was trying to bring out how little say she had in her own life, that even her lifestory is told for her, and not by her. And yes, her story was important in a way to show
how needed it was for Barbara to escape the same destiny her mother had been given, and which was still going to continue with that poor 17-year old girl who doesn't yet understand better than Jean Paul jr. I wish they had thrown him to jail. Thank god he got sued for assault

Maybe I had such a bad time with this book because I don't enjoy reading about nonlikeable characters..?
The ending did save this book for me, but I'm not going to recommend this to others, and hope I don't stumble upon a similiar book for a long while.

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A wealthy family, the Van Laars, have a summer mansion in upstate New York in a heavily forested area. The mansion is adjacent to a summer camp. The two children of Peter Van Laar the third and his wife Alice disappear at different times. Their eight-year-old son Bear disappears in 1961, and their 13-year-old daughter Barbara disappears n 1975. The story is told with multiple POVs and multiple timelines. The book is part mystery with law enforcement trying to figure out what happened to the two children. It is part thriller as there were a lot of tense scenes in the book. We learn the backstories of the characters whose POVs are told. There was a lot of misogyny from the male characters towards the women, from the women to other women, and from some of the women to themselves. One of the men brutally beat one of the women. The misogyny and the beating were hard for me to read. There were some scenes where law enforcement appeared to be trying to pin crimes on innocent people so wealthy people wouldn't be held accountable. This made me angry. Overall, I liked the book. I didn't have too much difficulty with the multiple POVs and timelines. It never was boring to me, but I did feel it was a little too long. I recommend the book to anyone looking with a good mystery thriller. Be cautious if the issues I described are troubling to you.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Loveable characters: Complicated

I’m so glad I decided to read this book! I’m not normally one to gravitate to mystery/crime novels but this one intrigued me. The novel starts off on the slow side but as it jumps around on the timeline you get quite invested in the characters and the story. It was mysterious and sad but at times hopeful, it was just the kind of story I wanted while transitioning from summer to autumn books. 🌲

4/5 ⭐️

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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