Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Devil House: A Novel by John Darnielle

10 reviews

whofilets's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

1.0

Read by the author, in a slow and detached voice. Jumps around with narrators and situations. I was invested though, and wanted to find out the mystery of the killer... In the end it was a total letdown. I would have been happier if it ended a couple chapters early

and the main writer-character just had to wrestle with his actions after being called out by the victims family member, and never knowing who the 'real killer' was.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Murder, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Minor: Vomit

jessiejonesbentley's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Not horror but not bad. Decent writing. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

loveallthis's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Blood, Grief, and Murder

Moderate: Alcoholism

Minor: Mass/school shootings and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

d3nim_diva's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Murder

Moderate: Mental illness

zw_books's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Blood, Grief, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

cviii's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Blood, Vomit, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol

juliana18's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Murder

Moderate: Body horror and Domestic abuse

Minor: Sexual content

thesupermassive's review against another edition

adventurous inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Gore, and Murder

Moderate: Domestic abuse and Physical abuse

wrensreadingroom's review against another edition

Incredibly dull and keeps jumping between 3 different stories

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Grief, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

skudiklier's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.5

This book is about murder and a true crime author, to an extent, but it is more accurately about what happens when you tell a story that has real consequences for real people; it's about truth, and sensationalism, and voyeurism. It has horrifically graphic violence, which is not my thing at all, but I feel like it would be hard for any reader to come away from this book with an uncomplicated love for true crime.

Devil House is one of those books that's hard to really talk about without spoiling the ending. Every chapter complicates the story further, until the synopsis seems barely what the story is really about at all. It's made me think about the meaning of truth as some pure ideal, and about what the point of telling any story is. I'm a writer of poetry, not prose, but I think this book will still impact how I think about writing moving forward.

I don't like true crime, and if I didn't read everything John Darnielle writes, it's very likely I would never have been interested in this book. Some parts were indeed more gruesome than I would have liked, but overall I'm glad I read it.

It also is of course written well, in the same style as Darnielle's other novels. There's a lot of second-person narration, which I think works well in this context. I wrote down a lot of quotes that I really enjoyed (and the only reason I'm not sharing any is that this review is long enough already).

Mild spoilers ahead, in my central complaint of the book:

Update from a few months after I originally wrote this review: I took the below section out of my B&N review now that the book is out, because I think in the actual book this chapter may be less distracting. It has a different font to signal something weird is going on (which I didn't have in my eARC), and it does connect to things in the book of course, so I was just too caught up in how weird it was I guess. I'm leaving the below just in case, but feel free to ignore it.

Several chapters take place in different time periods, with different narrators and main characters, but nearly all of them are still obviously connected. However, there's one chapter in the middle that is about an entirely different thing, and written in a different style; it almost feels like a different book altogether. You could argue that there are minor things linking it to the rest of the text, but it still feels very odd. And to top it all off, that chapter ends in the middle of a sentence.

Because I was reading an ARC, I genuinely wondered if the chapter simply weren't finished, if no one noticed it wasn't complete before letting readers like me have access to the book. But near the end of the book, a character is reading the manuscript Chandler has for Devil House, and it ends in the middle of a sentence, confusing the reader. This led me to believe that perhaps this odd chapter in the middle of the book is actually meant to end that way, and the reader is supposed to be confused. 

I can appreciate this on a stylistic level, and in hindsight I can see how this chapter may relate to the rest of the book. I also have a lot of respect for John Darnielle, and am generally inclined to think any weird stuff he does is genius. But I have to say that that chapter may lose some readers (it's not short and there's no payoff), and may frustrate more. I look forward to reading interviews with Darnielle about this book, in the hopes that he might explain this decision in a way that justifies the negative aspects. 

(Again though, I'm still not 100% convinced it was intentional. Maybe it would feel different for a reader with a fully published copy.)

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Violence, Blood, Stalking, and Murder

Moderate: Sexual assault and Vomit

Minor: Pedophilia

I cannot overstate how graphic some of the descriptions of murder and gore are.