Reviews - Girl Flesh | The StoryGraph

88 reviews for:

Girl Flesh

May Leitz

3.68 AVERAGE

pkatrinaanne's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

alyx30's review against another edition

3.5

dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

joyfullyexisting's review

4.0

dark hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Damn, this extreme horror novel really is about love, huh.

I read through the first half or so kinda slowly, thought the writing was maybe a little clumsy and repetitive but not in a way that damaged the pacing, really. May Leitz definitely knows how to put a horror story together. Finished the second half in one sitting. The ending was fantastic. Need some time to process it now.

Content Warnings

saphirice's review against another edition

3.0

I think calling this an extreme horror novel is a disservice to the work; to me, this was a character study delivered within horror wrapping paper. The two main characters in this book are very well done, and are by far the book's greatest strength. I loved how in-depth we got to know our character. I love her flaws, an in-depth examination of why she is the way she is. She's fun, she's unique. She doesn't seem derivative of other characters; she doesn't feel like an archetype. She feels real enough to hook me, but out-there enough to be entertaining. I feel similarly about Caro, even though we weren't in her head. The character development here isn't perfect, but it's really good. My main complaint is that sometimes it's a little too much? Getting a really long stream of consciousness and introspection in a horror/thriller novel can definitely kill the pacing. I do think it could've been refined and sprinkled throughout the book better. A lot of it ended up being repetitive.

That being said, the horror part of this novel does a great job at actually setting up that character development. The genre was utilized terrifically as a vehicle for it. Unfortunately, I wasn't really into the horror itself. Horror is something that's hard to nail in writing, and I unfortunately just don't think the author has enough prowess to do it properly. For an extreme horror novel, I never really got the horribly disturbed feelings I was expecting. Violence just sort of...happens, and isn't written strongly enough to make me actually feel it. This I think is the book's greatest weakness. I also don't think extreme horror/splatterpunk is really an accurate descriptor of the genre? There's only one scene of intense violence and I wouldn't say it's necessarily super extreme.

I think Leitz is really good at writing characters and themes, and should stick with that. The writing style will come and develop in time, because there's definitely potential there. This book is a good pick if you like horror that's actually trying to use the genre to say something instead of just being a gratuitous splatterfest.