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clairvoyant_weapons 's review for:
Broken Dolls
by Mique Watson
I love awful fucked up horror, which this was, but it was poorly written and kinda boring. It also relies way more on gross out horror than I tend to prefer. It feels like a cop-out, like the actions aren’t repulsive enough without relying on the easy disgust of shit & vomit. Which is disappointing because the actual action *is* repulsive, and I feel like the book would have been a lot better if it leaned more into that rather than diverting focus to oh look! More feces! The bones of the story have potential, but it was poorly executed. I think I could have enjoyed this if it had shown the psychological impact rather than just telling the reader that it’s awful. Like yeah, obviously pedophilia is bad, I know that, but make me *feel* the impact of being forced to do these things.
It’s a short read and which keeps it from feeling like too much of a waste of time (I finished it in an hour), but I wouldn’t recommend bothering with it unless you’re really into shit/vomit gross out stuff. If that’s your thing you might actually enjoy this, because visual description is the one thing this book has going for it, and I guess I learned a lot of ways to describe poop.
Did like the cheese grater bit.
Edit: Okay after ranting to a friend for a bit I realized why I really hated the gross out content here & lowered my rating from 1.25 to 0.5, because on further consideration I don’t think it’s just an issue of it not being my thing combined with poor writing. The focus on gross out horror takes away from everything else. The central premise of this book isn’t gross out, it’s a mother being forced to do absolutely unthinkable things to save her daughter. THAT should be the focus here!! For one thing, like I said before, show the emotion, don’t just tell me this is appalling because of her conservative upbringing. But at so many moments when that should be the most visceral, the focus is instead shifted to descriptions of poop and/or vomit.There’s a scene toward the end where the mother is forced to lick shit out of her daughter’s pussy, but instead of the focus being squarely on the fact that she’s raping her 12 year old daughter at gunpoint, the attention keeps getting shifted to poop. It would have felt much more visceral to me if it had just been straightforward forced oral so that the focus could stay on the actually horrifying action instead of being derailed by something as generic as “diarrhea is gross”. At a certain point it just becomes over the top & impossible to take seriously. It’s one thing if the central premise is gross out, but here it feels like it’s just actively taking away from the murder, mutilation, rape, and pedophilia. Those are all far more serious issues so the constant shifting toward gross out horror just feels like a way to hide how shallowly those subjects are handled, and because the gross out content is so over the top, it becomes harder to take the rest of what’s happening seriously, and not in a fun way like Baby in a Blender.
It’s a short read and which keeps it from feeling like too much of a waste of time (I finished it in an hour), but I wouldn’t recommend bothering with it unless you’re really into shit/vomit gross out stuff. If that’s your thing you might actually enjoy this, because visual description is the one thing this book has going for it, and I guess I learned a lot of ways to describe poop.
Did like the cheese grater bit.
Edit: Okay after ranting to a friend for a bit I realized why I really hated the gross out content here & lowered my rating from 1.25 to 0.5, because on further consideration I don’t think it’s just an issue of it not being my thing combined with poor writing. The focus on gross out horror takes away from everything else. The central premise of this book isn’t gross out, it’s a mother being forced to do absolutely unthinkable things to save her daughter. THAT should be the focus here!! For one thing, like I said before, show the emotion, don’t just tell me this is appalling because of her conservative upbringing. But at so many moments when that should be the most visceral, the focus is instead shifted to descriptions of poop and/or vomit.