Reviews tagging 'Lesbophobia'

The Red Word by Sarah Henstra

2 reviews

chaya_v's review

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

A beautifully written book about a rape culture. I enjoyed Karen’s perspective a lot, I felt like I was living through the same moral dilemmas as she was. The story allowed to show multiple perspectives and also how easily rape still goes unpunished. The events taking place in the book won’t sound unfamiliar to most college students. 

I wasn’t too much a fan of the present day povs, they felt a bit unnecessary. I didn’t really get what they were supposed to convey.

The friend group and Karen’s exclusion from their plans reminded of the Secret History by Donna Tart a little bit.
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marykatesbooks's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I’ve been reading a lot of books that center feminine rage lately, and this book had a unique approach to dealing with this topic. Instead of Karen, our main character, demonstrating her feminine rage, characters like Dyann take control on that front and the reader is forced to take a step back watching and waiting with Karen to see what Dyann does with her anger. I will say that the movement between past and present felt a little unnecessary, an epilogue would have given a similar impact in my opinion.
Spoiler I did like the use of the quote about the blood at the beginning though, in the present when Karen focuses on that snapshot memory we get a glimpse into the road we’re going down with her. Honestly by the time the actual blood scene happened I had completely forgotten about it, so I was JARRED by Bruce’s death. It was so sudden and tragic, which I suppose is the point.
I absolutely loved how Greek mythos was tied into the book, it didn’t feel too forced and there were moments where I couldn’t tell if it was an allusion to mythology or if i was just looking too hard. The way that Henstra tied in Catholic imagery was quite interesting to me as well because it reminded me of the Madonna-whore complex, I was actually reminded of this complex very frequently while reading the book. At times it felt like the book was trying to be and do too many things all at the same time, so it left me feeling like I wasn’t getting the complete story by the end despite the cuts between past and present. I primarily wish the readers got closure for the characters, we barely heard anything about them. Overall I quite liked the book, but there were a lot of areas that I would tweak if the book were just for me.
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