Review by soaphest - We Can Never Leave This Place

soaphest 's review for:

We Can Never Leave This Place by Eric LaRocca

3.5

dark tense

what the hell😭 ok maybe ill expand on this later but while i really enjoyed the dark fairytale esque characters and imagery my main gripe with this story is the ending

like it was pretty obvious already from the beginning that mara was projecting her fantasies onto these home invaders. like literally it’s said on the back that she has an “unusual imagination” but that isn’t even the thing that bothered me. it was rather how it was presented in the end as if it was some huge reveal that we didn’t get already?? like. oh they were humans all along!! no shit???? same thing with mara’s dad also being her mother’s son like. the picture was enough to know. idk.

also im not a huge fan of the vulnerability of young girls/women being used for shock value in horror like this like,, the horror was really good as it was but i dont think having

the constant looming threat of a 15-year-old’s potential SA hanging as a very fucked up sword of damocles over our heads really added to it. idk

. what i did very much enjoy however was how eerie and atmospheric it was. like from the get-go you get pulled into the story with very little buildup & it still manages to be so compelling from the start that you just really want to keep reading.

Content Warnings