Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Der Papierpalast

I really liked this book.

Very surprisingly , the main characters experiences with family mirror a lot of mine, right from the grandmother to the mother .

The generational trauma resolved itself slightly with every generation but it was still very apparent that this is a very troubled family line.

The author , still have a pass more than I think she should have to Elle's mother. She wasn’t a good mother . She was neglectful and selfish and narcissistic. She allowed her men to abuse her daughters emotionally and put her daughters in harms way. It still sounded a bit like her mom was a wonderful person but maybe , true to my life , that next generation will come out even cleaner than Elle and Anna.

I can see how she ended up having an affair. I don’t like it but I see how it happened .

Most definitely this was a difficult read to get through but it was very well wrote.

The only marks I took off were because I often couldn’t keep track of the characters and jumping back and forth was done differently than I had ever read before.

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sazzzberry's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.75

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alisha247's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad slow-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

3.0

this is one very difficult book to review for a few reasons.

the first thing i really noticed about this novel was its writing. the author wrote some really beautiful sentences, especially those focusing on nature imagery, however there were also plenty of sentences that were either prose overkill or simply did not make sense. this, coupled with the incessant back and forth timelines, sometimes spanning years, did not help me follow these characters’ journeys.

secondly, the triggering content. there was unnecessary amounts of graphic sexual abuse and emotional neglect of children. i understand the message the novel was trying to portray with this - how trauma can tremendously shape lives, but the imagery was not needed.

furthermore, none of the characters were very likeable. they were very much one-dimensional to me. this made it difficult to empathise with any of their choices. for some characters, their distastefulness worked well in the story e.g. elle’s parents, her stepparents etc. but for others, readers almost needed to be won over for the story to excel e.g. i certainly felt that peter was bland and his only character traits were being english and vulgar; jonas was presented as a total sweetheart as a child but as an adult, there was no charisma.

and then the ending. i don’t usually mind ambiguous endings, but this left too many loose ends in its wake!

Content Warnings

kate_not_kate's review against another edition

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dark 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? It's complicated

4.25

Potentially with spoilers.

Nope it was definitely not the summer read I was hoping to get. 3 different underage girls are getting rapped. One by her stepdad, other by the brother and main character by her stepbrother. Till the end I don’t understand why she blamed herself what happened with her “DeFiNeTlY not a serial killer” (yes he could be the one) stepbrother.

The real good part of the book was Jonas and Anna. The stories with them were really interesting to read.

But still, be prepared to read a book where in the second chapter a 9 year old girl is forced to give bj her stepdad and where parents don’t see all the abuse that happens.

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