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A review by jessicah95
The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund
3.0
Such conflicting feelings about this one, and I have a lot of them. I might try and construct a more coherent review at some point, but for now, here are some of my *spoiler free!* thoughts:
The portrayal of mental illness is definitely problematic, albeit with good intentions I think.
I can't decide whether the plot is intricately woven and clever or lazily piecemeal and convoluted.
Personally, I couldn't distinguish between which of the two authors were writing at any one time, and that impressed me.
Without revealing any spoilers, I think the characters that needed depth to their backstories were glossed over, and others were given too much - but I can also see how this was necessary to ensure the reader wasn't given all the information and the twists and turns could continue until the last few pages; I was successfully duped at least.
All the trigger warnings for psychological abuse, incest, sexual violence and actually just brutal violence in general; it did start to feel more and more gratuitous the longer the book went on.
I think the author's were trying to say some really important things about misogyny, treatment of immigrants, the complexities of gender and sexuality (which was probably the most poorly handled) and society in general; but these good intentions weren't necessarily executed well and it can definitely be said that some of the subplots could have been sacrificed in order to make space for this.
Originally published in Sweden as a trilogy I think the middle book, Part II in this case, was the weakest and dragged a little.
I feel like it would be easy to say this was too long but I do not typically read novels much beyond 300 pages, and this did keep me intrigued enough to finish it's near 800 pages.
Finally, I don't know who I would recommend this to. It's not a pleasant read, but it was a successful 'thriller' for me, although definitely an uncomfortably read. I don't read much of this genre at all, so I don't have much to compare it to.
If you're reading this 'review', have read this book and have read more Scandinavian crime than I have, please do let me know how this compares to others of this ilk!
The portrayal of mental illness is definitely problematic, albeit with good intentions I think.
I can't decide whether the plot is intricately woven and clever or lazily piecemeal and convoluted.
Personally, I couldn't distinguish between which of the two authors were writing at any one time, and that impressed me.
Without revealing any spoilers, I think the characters that needed depth to their backstories were glossed over, and others were given too much - but I can also see how this was necessary to ensure the reader wasn't given all the information and the twists and turns could continue until the last few pages; I was successfully duped at least.
All the trigger warnings for psychological abuse, incest, sexual violence and actually just brutal violence in general; it did start to feel more and more gratuitous the longer the book went on.
I think the author's were trying to say some really important things about misogyny, treatment of immigrants, the complexities of gender and sexuality (which was probably the most poorly handled) and society in general; but these good intentions weren't necessarily executed well and it can definitely be said that some of the subplots could have been sacrificed in order to make space for this.
Originally published in Sweden as a trilogy I think the middle book, Part II in this case, was the weakest and dragged a little.
I feel like it would be easy to say this was too long but I do not typically read novels much beyond 300 pages, and this did keep me intrigued enough to finish it's near 800 pages.
Finally, I don't know who I would recommend this to. It's not a pleasant read, but it was a successful 'thriller' for me, although definitely an uncomfortably read. I don't read much of this genre at all, so I don't have much to compare it to.
If you're reading this 'review', have read this book and have read more Scandinavian crime than I have, please do let me know how this compares to others of this ilk!