Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias

3 reviews

leahrosereads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The Devil Takes You Home was gritty, heart wrenching, disturbing, and so fucking interesting.  It's going to sound weird, but I savored this story, sat with it for days longer than it normally takes me, and still, even as it ended, I wanted more.

Not because this story wasn't told to fruition, because it was, and spectacularly so, but because I'm absolutely unhingedly intrigued by the bits of supernatural we saw.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Drug use, Racism, Violence, Blood, and Grief

Moderate: Body horror, Child abuse, Confinement, Domestic abuse, and Racial slurs

Minor: Transphobia

ruthypoo2's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This story is not for the faint-hearted because there are some very brutal incidents involving injury, murder, death, abuse, drug use. Set primarily in Texas in a world of violent crime and desperation, the main character, Mario, is still reeling from the death of his young daughter and the breakdown of his marriage. The author nimbly weaves a number of serious social issues throughout his book, with one in particular being the way health care costs in the United States can bankrupt people and take them to a very low point in their life.

Looking for a way to recover financial stability and win back his estranged wife, Mario embarks on a life of crime he sees as short term. An opportunity becomes available for Mario to join two friends for a high-paying job that promises to be the payday they all need to start over and leave behind their criminal pasts. Unfortunately, this last job takes them into the underbelly of a world where the strong survive eliminating rivals and punishing traitors, and in this world, spirituality harnesses not just God, but the Devil too.

Really well-written story and a good translation. The assorted people and various landscapes of their environments felt visceral and real. In a lot of books and movies, criminals and the poor are portrayed in a one-dimensional way, but in this book, the characters possess great intelligence and depth, and the reader may likely be exposed to a harsh reality that many people experience but many more are insulated from by virtue of their skin color, neighborhood, lineage, and sometimes just luck.

I listened to the audiobook, and the narration by Jean-Marc Berne was excellent.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child abuse, Confinement, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, Cancer, Child death, Drug use, Gore, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Blood, and Grief

Minor: Homophobia, Infidelity, Medical content, and Alcohol

jennifer_bush_73's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Bullying, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Blood, Cannibalism, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail