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telthor 's review for:
The Initial Insult
by Mindy McGinnis
1.5 but I’m angry at it so rounding down. rtc in a bit probably.
~*~*~*~
How many plot points does a book need? Having multiple subplots intertwined throughout the main story, dovetailing back and forth to create a cohesive beautiful whole, even when the story is horror and gruesome should work.
But this book has Killer Flu (do not read in the time of the Backstreet Boys Reunion Tour), stalking murder panthers [with its own perspective bad poetry chapters WHY], a worldwide mocking livestream in which a teen boy strips naked by the end and starts twirling his bits to the chiming of a clock on instagram, animal abuse, date-rape (technically she isn't raped but she's given drugs and is seconds away from non-consensual consent if not for the "good" timing of a seizure), infidelity, gaslighting for the sake of keeping up the family appearances, more alcohol than a liquor store, bouncing timelines that go as far back as kindergarten, all shoved into an Edgar Allen Poe story retelling in which a girl is bricking up her former friend in a coal chute while trying to find out what happened to her parents.
Oh and the dog dies.
Picking two or three of the other things to intertwine in there would have been nice. All of them at once? Ridiculously convoluted. Not hard to follow, but lacking weight. Stuff just happens, and everything goes along with it. It's so busy, it's so hectic, it's just one big distraction for padding. This should have been a short story like the original story it's riffing from.
This should have been so much shorter. We didn't need to go all the way back to kindergarten.
The "it's my fault I deserve this" shtick wouldn't have felt so limp if it hadn't been there so much.
McGinnis seems to think that gross-out things mean impact. The amount of bodily fluids in this book is enough to drown in. So much gore, so much vomit, so much urine. This is slasher level horror, and yet I really don't think the book itself needed so much. It's gratuitous at a point, and pointlessly numbing when she slips in her own urine. Like. We get it, this is awful.
If you're going to use a gimmick like having text bubbles, make sure they're formatted correctly. I found an instant where the protagonist's texts were on the left instead of the right like they're supposed to be. Just don't bother if you're going to do it wrong, it's a waste of time and confusing.
I haven't read Cask of Amontillado in a really long time. Like, decade long time, if not longer. But it's what all the kids read in their junior levels English, probably, so it's a good story to adapt. Well known. I remember the memes from a few years back and so does everyone else.
All the Poe references like the Mask of Red Death and the Pendulum (and i grudgingly guess the cat) were nice little touches though.
Does not need a sequel. Do not need to drag it out. I suppose it's because we don't know who carried her away from the scene, and there are airholes in the mortar so she can conceivably live to the next book for a proper explanation of what happened, but it's unneeded. Just. Tell the story in one book. Maybe removing some of the extraneous junk would have given you the room for it.
I admit to hate reading the last third and I was looking for a fight, but the book didn't have to make it that easy to annoy me.
~*~*~*~
How many plot points does a book need? Having multiple subplots intertwined throughout the main story, dovetailing back and forth to create a cohesive beautiful whole, even when the story is horror and gruesome should work.
But this book has Killer Flu (do not read in the time of the Backstreet Boys Reunion Tour), stalking murder panthers [with its own perspective bad poetry chapters WHY], a worldwide mocking livestream in which a teen boy strips naked by the end and starts twirling his bits to the chiming of a clock on instagram, animal abuse, date-rape (technically she isn't raped but she's given drugs and is seconds away from non-consensual consent if not for the "good" timing of a seizure), infidelity, gaslighting for the sake of keeping up the family appearances, more alcohol than a liquor store, bouncing timelines that go as far back as kindergarten, all shoved into an Edgar Allen Poe story retelling in which a girl is bricking up her former friend in a coal chute while trying to find out what happened to her parents.
Oh and the dog dies.
Picking two or three of the other things to intertwine in there would have been nice. All of them at once? Ridiculously convoluted. Not hard to follow, but lacking weight. Stuff just happens, and everything goes along with it. It's so busy, it's so hectic, it's just one big distraction for padding. This should have been a short story like the original story it's riffing from.
This should have been so much shorter. We didn't need to go all the way back to kindergarten.
The "it's my fault I deserve this" shtick wouldn't have felt so limp if it hadn't been there so much.
McGinnis seems to think that gross-out things mean impact. The amount of bodily fluids in this book is enough to drown in. So much gore, so much vomit, so much urine. This is slasher level horror, and yet I really don't think the book itself needed so much. It's gratuitous at a point, and pointlessly numbing when she slips in her own urine. Like. We get it, this is awful.
If you're going to use a gimmick like having text bubbles, make sure they're formatted correctly. I found an instant where the protagonist's texts were on the left instead of the right like they're supposed to be. Just don't bother if you're going to do it wrong, it's a waste of time and confusing.
I haven't read Cask of Amontillado in a really long time. Like, decade long time, if not longer. But it's what all the kids read in their junior levels English, probably, so it's a good story to adapt. Well known. I remember the memes from a few years back and so does everyone else.
All the Poe references like the Mask of Red Death and the Pendulum (and i grudgingly guess the cat) were nice little touches though.
Does not need a sequel. Do not need to drag it out. I suppose it's because we don't know who carried her away from the scene, and there are airholes in the mortar so she can conceivably live to the next book for a proper explanation of what happened, but it's unneeded. Just. Tell the story in one book. Maybe removing some of the extraneous junk would have given you the room for it.
I admit to hate reading the last third and I was looking for a fight, but the book didn't have to make it that easy to annoy me.