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Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'
Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
12 reviews
foreverinastory's review against another edition
mysterious
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
4.0
This was something else. If you really do not like snakes, don't read this one. There's lots of snakes especially cobras and other venomous ones. And a snake nose man--inserts a snake in his nose. It was very gross.
Rep: Biracial Vietnamese-American cishet female MC, cishet Vietnamese cast.
CWs: Blood, body horror (including swapping bodies and possession), drug use/abuse, death, murder, animal cruelty (capturing snakes to take venom, attempted dog kidnapping to take to a restaurant), gore, injury/injury detail, sexual assault, sexual content, sexual violence, snakes, suicide, toxic friendship, violence, xenophobia. Moderate: Misogyny, incest, rape, attempted necrophilia, colonisation, sexism. Minor: eating disorder, cursing, racism, war.
Rep: Biracial Vietnamese-American cishet female MC, cishet Vietnamese cast.
CWs: Blood, body horror (including swapping bodies and possession), drug use/abuse, death, murder, animal cruelty (capturing snakes to take venom, attempted dog kidnapping to take to a restaurant), gore, injury/injury detail, sexual assault, sexual content, sexual violence, snakes, suicide, toxic friendship, violence, xenophobia. Moderate: Misogyny, incest, rape, attempted necrophilia, colonisation, sexism. Minor: eating disorder, cursing, racism, war.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Gore, Drug use, Alcohol, Blood, Xenophobia, Body horror, Sexual violence, Animal cruelty, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Drug abuse, Sexual content, Suicide, Toxic friendship, and Violence
Moderate: Incest, Sexism, Misogyny, Rape, and Colonisation
Minor: Cursing, Eating disorder, Racism, and War
annreadsabook's review
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Why aren't more people talking about this book??
At the highest level of abstraction, Build Your House Around My Body is about 22-year-old Winnie Nguyen, a young Vietnamese-American woman employed at an English language academy in Saigon who suddenly goes missing—the culmination of years of events unbeknownst to Winnie herself. The jacket cover describes the novel as "part puzzle, part revenge tale, and part ghost story," and I think that's probably the best way to concisely summarize this book. Honestly, though, I don't want to give too much away here because I thoroughly enjoyed going into this book with pretty much only the jacket cover's explanation to inform my expectations (and let me just say, I really was not prepared for what was in these pages)...
After briefly seeing a couple (spoiler-free) reviews of this novel, I decided to give it a go and I absolutely do not regret it. Build Your House Around My Body is a whirlwind spanning the course of over half a century of Vietnamese history, from haunted rubber plantations to Saigon nightclubs. Although I'm sometimes annoyed at novels that force the reader to switch perspectives between characters, Violet Kupersmith does a fantastic job of weaving together various stories across multiple decades such that it was hard for me to put this book down. The arrangement of these various characters and timelines adds to the sense that the past is very much alive today—in more ways than one might think. Kupersmith's novel additionally considers the ways in which women have been mistreated, subjugated, and considered disposable (that's where the revenge comes in).
If you're a fan of magical realism, horror, or historical fiction, I highly recommend this book!!
At the highest level of abstraction, Build Your House Around My Body is about 22-year-old Winnie Nguyen, a young Vietnamese-American woman employed at an English language academy in Saigon who suddenly goes missing—the culmination of years of events unbeknownst to Winnie herself. The jacket cover describes the novel as "part puzzle, part revenge tale, and part ghost story," and I think that's probably the best way to concisely summarize this book. Honestly, though, I don't want to give too much away here because I thoroughly enjoyed going into this book with pretty much only the jacket cover's explanation to inform my expectations (and let me just say, I really was not prepared for what was in these pages)...
After briefly seeing a couple (spoiler-free) reviews of this novel, I decided to give it a go and I absolutely do not regret it. Build Your House Around My Body is a whirlwind spanning the course of over half a century of Vietnamese history, from haunted rubber plantations to Saigon nightclubs. Although I'm sometimes annoyed at novels that force the reader to switch perspectives between characters, Violet Kupersmith does a fantastic job of weaving together various stories across multiple decades such that it was hard for me to put this book down. The arrangement of these various characters and timelines adds to the sense that the past is very much alive today—in more ways than one might think. Kupersmith's novel additionally considers the ways in which women have been mistreated, subjugated, and considered disposable (that's where the revenge comes in).
If you're a fan of magical realism, horror, or historical fiction, I highly recommend this book!!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Sexual content
Moderate: Colonisation
Minor: Eating disorder
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