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A review by bookishtabby
IM by Rick R. Reed
1.0
I am incredibly sorry to say that I DNF'd this book a little under 60% of the way through. I really wanted to love this book and had all the elements that I normally would but I didn't.
This story has an amazing premise that hints at mystery, the unknown, and the possibility of the supernatural. The reason I didn't like it as I thought I would is two-fold. The first being that we switch perspectives a lot. Almost every new section is told from a different character's point of view, which made it incredibly difficult to connect to any one of them - especially the main character. We don't get to spend enough time with the main character to really emphasize with him. This is highlighted by the fact that he is dealing with a homicide case that hits really close to home and I didn't care how he felt about it. And we spend a lot of time in the victim's perspective which is really hard to read.
The second part follows the first. One if the perspectives we read from is the killer's. I feel like this is already an incredibly difficult point of view to write from because the author has to get us to understand their killer's motives without making it seem like a cartoon/over exaggerated version of one. In this book, that was not helped that there is kind of this possible mysterious/supernatural feeling to the character. the beginning of the book, we are made to question if the killer had actually died and someone was posing as them or if something else was going on. But we find out pretty early on who the killer is and this negates any mystery towards the killer. I feel that this could have been helped some if the author learned into this supernatural/spooky aspect and not had the killer be a POV we read from. Maybe kept it to the detective's POV and make us wonder/the detective wonder if the killer was really who he thought it was, if someone was playing with him, or if something supernatural was going on.
I would give trigger warnings for sexual abuse, under age sex, animal harm, and necrophilia.
*SPOILER SECTION*
The killer is maybe gay (was not confirmed when I DNF'd) who has had to deal with some awful abuse and takes his anger and pain out on gay guys. It is very graphic and hard to read. I guess I assumed that the killer was gay and for that I did not care to see this book perpetuate the "villianize your gays" trope. It could be argued that the MC is also gay, which is fair, but I don't feel that this offsets the fact that the killer is gay because we spend a lot more time in the killer's point of view than we do in the MC's.
This story has an amazing premise that hints at mystery, the unknown, and the possibility of the supernatural. The reason I didn't like it as I thought I would is two-fold. The first being that we switch perspectives a lot. Almost every new section is told from a different character's point of view, which made it incredibly difficult to connect to any one of them - especially the main character. We don't get to spend enough time with the main character to really emphasize with him. This is highlighted by the fact that he is dealing with a homicide case that hits really close to home and I didn't care how he felt about it. And we spend a lot of time in the victim's perspective which is really hard to read.
The second part follows the first. One if the perspectives we read from is the killer's. I feel like this is already an incredibly difficult point of view to write from because the author has to get us to understand their killer's motives without making it seem like a cartoon/over exaggerated version of one. In this book, that was not helped that there is kind of this possible mysterious/supernatural feeling to the character. the beginning of the book, we are made to question if the killer had actually died and someone was posing as them or if something else was going on. But we find out pretty early on who the killer is and this negates any mystery towards the killer. I feel that this could have been helped some if the author learned into this supernatural/spooky aspect and not had the killer be a POV we read from. Maybe kept it to the detective's POV and make us wonder/the detective wonder if the killer was really who he thought it was, if someone was playing with him, or if something supernatural was going on.
I would give trigger warnings for sexual abuse, under age sex, animal harm, and necrophilia.
*SPOILER SECTION*
The killer is maybe gay (was not confirmed when I DNF'd) who has had to deal with some awful abuse and takes his anger and pain out on gay guys. It is very graphic and hard to read. I guess I assumed that the killer was gay and for that I did not care to see this book perpetuate the "villianize your gays" trope. It could be argued that the MC is also gay, which is fair, but I don't feel that this offsets the fact that the killer is gay because we spend a lot more time in the killer's point of view than we do in the MC's.