A review by mijtje
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

dark sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This book is Convenience Store Woman on steroids. The same theme, basically the same protagonist and the same husband. Only this one is totally unhinged. 

First quarter: almost DNF’ed because of explicitly described sexual abuse of a child. I firmly believe this should not be in a book. I hate when something like this is described in detail; I don’t need to spend 5 minutes reading about it to know how horrible it is. It is also such a serious theme that it felt inappropriate to read about it in such a weird, almost playful manner. The same goes for the victim shaming later on in the book.

The rest felt like a Grocery Store Woman do-over, but then with an alien instead of a grocery store woman.

And then came the last quarter of the book. THAT was the kind of insane absurdity I was looking for. Redeemed the book a little bit, even got it up to 3 stars, and made it feel very different from The Grocery Woman.

ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS THOUGH. Seriously. This book is easily the weirdest I have ever read.
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