Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Man o' War

this book felt very much semi-autobiographical, especially with the added context of McCarthy's prior works and the little i know about him from the booksleeve. specific songs, cultural icons, basis for nicknames and other details carry over and are used in the situations. like, the exact same songs. there's only so many times when different characters can have their signature song be Under Pressure by Queen because they play it when they're under stess, and other characters comment on it being their favorite song.

because of this, it's hard to offer a genuine review of man o' war, because i don't want to critique someone's lived experences.

this book has an interesting structure, with focus on periods of River's life in which major events happen then cut to the next period, with a fun fact about a marine creature to bridge the gap between months or (usually) years of river's life. this works well here. the writing itself has places where it suffers from style over substance, especially in the earlier chapters. There's a love story, but we also get to hear often about how hot river is and how much sex he's having. this is especially grating when it's directly juxtaposed with them having a committed long term crush on their love interest.

this is a very important story, and McCarthy doesn't pull punches on traumatic stuff. we spend a lot of time with river experiencing a range of heavy emotions as they grow up and into themselves. that being said, we don't spend nearly any with them when they're finally happy and no longer the angry kid from the first page that isn't summarized

Content Warnings