A review by chloseencounter
Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana

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

2.0

This book reminded me why I need to stop taking recs from booktok. Every other book video I see told me that this is the most disturbing book so and so has ever read, so morbid curiosity got the best of me. The description was very interesting to me so I was really hoping for this novel to be everything I was looking for and more but unfortunately it just…wasn’t. Partly it was my own fault because I went in knowing very little about this book, I was expecting the “extreme horror” aspect to be a lot more visceral violence and not just generally upsetting. So you can imagine that I was a little caught off guard by some of the content. 

What I did enjoy about this book was the second half, I really liked the more folk horror aspects of this story. That bit was more gripping to me than just learning about how much the MC sucks. The latter half of this novel is the only reason I’d rate it a 2.0 at all. 

I was also quite put off by the way the two sisters where written. It felt very much like the sexually promiscuous sister is horrible and evil and the “innocent” and infantilized sister is pure and a perfect angel. It was a very unrealistic portrayal of women in general and kind of a weird vibe even if the author didn’t mean it that way. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings