madarauchiha's review
1.0
✨🌠 my about / byf / CW info carrd: uchiha-madara 🌠✨
I don't even know how I found this book. I guess storygraph recced it to me? Ok. From the summary I figured this was an edgy pedo horror abuse shit and I was irght. There's child abuse but not outright pedo shit a la CSA. Alright there's some overt pedo shit wiht he infantilization of a adult woman and her being groomed for her entire life. The first half of the book is the villain and his victim. The rest of the book is the victim wandering around being 'free' and us getting info dumps on who the villain is and how he got to this point. And I do mean info dumps. POV switches and we get a info dump of who they are and their backstory and how they are involved with the villain. and then we get serendipitous crossed paths of characters and there's never really an tension. The villains plots are not in danger of being foiled, and I think that's why the book flounders for me.
The writing was decent. I thought the pacing was off. It was fine at the start, switched POV and started dragging real bad. I had zero investment with any of the characters, personally. They were incredibly one dimensional. I think the mc(?) Vanilla was trying to poke into a second dimension, but the book never really followed through with this.
The plot twist ending was... ok. Not out of no where, you know from the start what the villain guy wanted to do. The ending with the kid was. Idk. I think at 80 percent of the way through I justwanted to see what the finale was. I lost interest. I think there's definitely themes of generational abuse and what not but again, I don't care enough to thnk about it.
There's a lot of sexual violence and sexual harassment. Even the city is one dimensional in that this is all there is to the location. You got cis men sexually harassing / assulting women on street who can only run away or cower. Trans people don't exist in this book and I'm glad because jesus christ keep your hands off trans character if this is what you write cis characters like. Anyways we get bland characters all around. It's all very tragic sad trauma porn and I'm struggling to figure out who would like this book. There's no hook. There's not even a mystery that characters uncover. There's silly philosophical shit conveyed by a character that sounds like a emo kid from the early 00s. Omg xd Im dead?? rawr? Where teh thump thump?! 0.0'''
Lesbophobia.
Lesbians, skip this. So basically the one
I don't rec this. There's better written more interesting horror out there.
content warnings.
minor incest, whorephobic language,
medium kidnapping,
major arson, blood, body horror, child abuse, child death, confinement, emotional abuse, fire, gore, gun violence, injuries, lesbophobia, medical abuse, medical content, miscarriage, murder, sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual violence, unsanitary, violence, whorephobia
I don't even know how I found this book. I guess storygraph recced it to me? Ok. From the summary I figured this was an edgy pedo horror abuse shit and I was irght. There's child abuse but not outright pedo shit a la CSA. Alright there's some overt pedo shit wiht he infantilization of a adult woman and her being groomed for her entire life. The first half of the book is the villain and his victim. The rest of the book is the victim wandering around being 'free' and us getting info dumps on who the villain is and how he got to this point. And I do mean info dumps. POV switches and we get a info dump of who they are and their backstory and how they are involved with the villain. and then we get serendipitous crossed paths of characters and there's never really an tension. The villains plots are not in danger of being foiled, and I think that's why the book flounders for me.
The writing was decent. I thought the pacing was off. It was fine at the start, switched POV and started dragging real bad. I had zero investment with any of the characters, personally. They were incredibly one dimensional. I think the mc(?) Vanilla was trying to poke into a second dimension, but the book never really followed through with this.
The plot twist ending was... ok. Not out of no where, you know from the start what the villain guy wanted to do. The ending with the kid was. Idk. I think at 80 percent of the way through I justwanted to see what the finale was. I lost interest. I think there's definitely themes of generational abuse and what not but again, I don't care enough to thnk about it.
There's a lot of sexual violence and sexual harassment. Even the city is one dimensional in that this is all there is to the location. You got cis men sexually harassing / assulting women on street who can only run away or cower. Trans people don't exist in this book and I'm glad because jesus christ keep your hands off trans character if this is what you write cis characters like. Anyways we get bland characters all around. It's all very tragic sad trauma porn and I'm struggling to figure out who would like this book. There's no hook. There's not even a mystery that characters uncover. There's silly philosophical shit conveyed by a character that sounds like a emo kid from the early 00s. Omg xd Im dead?? rawr? Where teh thump thump?! 0.0'''
Lesbophobia.
Lesbians, skip this. So basically the one
Spoiler
victim character [vanilla] goes to a party with one of the MCs who promptly ditches her and the MCs friend tiffany leads the Victim upstairs where they lay on a bed and she starts touching Victim. During this touching, Tiffany randomly traumadumps her very tragic past of having a girl best friend who she was dating as a child [teen? it's not clear] and one day her dad catches them doing lesbian stuff [i assume sex] and throws a lesbophobic tantrum, throwing the lesbian gf out of his house. The lesbian gf never shows up to stchool and tiffany assumes she either moved away or died of a hate crime within the time span of being thrown out and going home. Then tiffany makes her move on Victim, who promptly kills her brutally goreily, on screen.I don't rec this. There's better written more interesting horror out there.
content warnings.
minor incest, whorephobic language,
medium kidnapping,
major arson, blood, body horror, child abuse, child death, confinement, emotional abuse, fire, gore, gun violence, injuries, lesbophobia, medical abuse, medical content, miscarriage, murder, sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual violence, unsanitary, violence, whorephobia
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Lesbophobia, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and Violence
Moderate: Kidnapping
Minor: Incest
bozzi1's review
dark
emotional
slow-paced
3.0
I liked the concept for this story, but unfortunately the execution didn’t work as well as I expected. The introduction to Vanilla was interesting and sucked me right in, but started to feel repetitive the longer the plot remained in the same room. Most of the action takes place in the last quarter of the book and I liked several scenes, but also felt like I was playing catch up to figure out what was happening. I don’t mind twists or surprises, but in this case I would have preferred more background for Tiffany and Victor earlier in the story. I do think the author writes beautifully and even though Vanilla didn’t work for me, other fans of vampire/coming of age/love horror could connect with this one better than I did. I look forward to reading more from Mona in the future.
blakesbooks's review
4.5
Just finished Vanilla, and all I can say is wow. I was hooked from the prologue to the last page. I didn’t want to stop reading. It’s dark and beautiful and wonderful. If you’re a fan of horror, give Mona Kabbani’s a books a try. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
andibrotten's review
5.0
I should preface this with Mona and I work together on Unbearable Scares podcast but I will always review her work because before the podcast I was obsessed with her Wattpad stories. Always a fan first. That being said holy skeletons this is an amazing book!
I might have been up all night reading the ebook cause I couldn't wait to get the paperback. Not only is this book beautiful but its very deep. It takes you on a longer journey than The Bell Chime and lets you peer into the mind of a character that has so much to explore.
Like most of Mona's writing this does need a bit of time to digest and mull over. Her writing has a way of getting into the crevices of your brain and make you question what you know is happening. I can't wait to read this book again just to see the pieces that I didn't notice before.
I might have been up all night reading the ebook cause I couldn't wait to get the paperback. Not only is this book beautiful but its very deep. It takes you on a longer journey than The Bell Chime and lets you peer into the mind of a character that has so much to explore.
Like most of Mona's writing this does need a bit of time to digest and mull over. Her writing has a way of getting into the crevices of your brain and make you question what you know is happening. I can't wait to read this book again just to see the pieces that I didn't notice before.
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