Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - The Virgin Suicides

Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

31 reviews

httpscl0d4gh's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

clovetra's review against another edition

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sad tense 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? No

1.0

i’ve done it folks. i’ve found the worst fucking book to exist. i think i am an avid Hater of this book.

why did i finish this? it ended up being a hate read. plus i was curious if it would redeem itself (spoiler alert: it didn’t. not even close).

now immediately, away from the actual story. why was this book so fucking racist and ableist and pro-pedophilia. a side character is called “Joe the R[-slur]”. what the fuck. the n-word, HARD R, is used for a description when it could’ve easily been omitted. what the fuck. pedophilia is essentially portrayed as admirable in this story, and most of its pages contain grown men fantasising about girls who died as CHILDREN. why are grown men in-text writing about a minor having sex? why is a grown man as an AUTHOR writing about a minor having sex????? lowkey explicitly???? yes i realise YA is written by adults and sometimes contains sex scenes. but my god it’s like a “flash forward” most of the time. why am i reading about luxx sucking off a guy. hey what the fuck this girl is like 15 years old let’s not. what goes through the authors’ mind where he’s like “mmm i’m gonna write with explicit detail this minor having sex! yeah that’s not odd.” and miss me with that “oh this book came out a long time ago it was a different time.” mf this book came out in fucking 93. you’re telling me racism and pedophilia weren’t a thing in 1993. sure i get the casual ableism (miss me with ur comments im disabled) because it’s still very normalised to this day!!! but you cannot convince me the n-word was needed here. or the 75 different scenes describing how promiscuous lux is. i don’t care.

the actual book was less interesting than paint drying. i thought we’d actually get an interesting story. but no. i read about the horny mc and his friends simping over these girls for 90% of the book, with celia’s suicide tackled decently at the beginning & the rest of the girl’s suicides feeling like an afterthought. you set up a book about how all the girls commit suicide, and have 4/5 of the suicides occur with less than 20% of the book left. are you kidding me. the rest of this book was senseless drivel covering the same exhausting song and dance, where we learn absolutely nothing about the lisbon girls beyond their superficial traits and how fucking horny their classmates are. for fucks sake i couldn’t give two shits about how they were “mesmerised” by the “enigmatic lisbon girls”. hey here’s some quick advice go fuck yourself.

pick a struggle ur book can’t be boring AND ableist, racist, and pedophilic.
i am actually so angry at this book. i am so angry i don’t think i can properly explain how much i fucking hate this book.

what a waste of time. this book has as much depth as my minecraft fanfiction from grade 3. actually no i take that back my fanfiction was better than this. fuck you.

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lostfoxtrail's review against another edition

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dark 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? It's complicated

1.5

Absolutely hated this book. The reason it got a rating this high was because I was hooked for the first 30 pages or so. Then it just becomes this long creepy story where really nothing happens for 100 pages. It made me question why this was a novel instead of a short story. The way the girls are described by the main character is actually pretty disturbing, which may be the point, but it seems pretty normalised in the narrative. It’s supposed to be the MC as an adult reflecting on his childhood, but he’s still describing these girls who aren’t much older than 14 in vivid, sexual detail. So, a grown man writing a grown man writing about a horny teenage boy. If the author was going for what I think he was, then it was extremely poorly executed. The book seems to have a nostalgic, vignette description of these events, even though it’s describing the life of five abused and disturbed young women taking their own lives. The hook of the book is only covered in the first 30 pages and then the last 30 pages. I genuinely feel that the pages in the middle did nothing to add to the narrative. Though it’s supposed to be all about these girls, they’re all cardboard cutouts. The same with the male characters. The book is far too long to feel like I didn’t know any of the characters by the end. The whole thing was just in poor taste and I was sick of it by the midway mark. Only reason I finished it was because it had been hyped up so much. Maybe in the future I’d be interested in trying Middlesex, as that’s also recommended even if you don’t like TVS. God this book sucked.

Content Warnings

panda's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad slow-paced

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

5.0

It's a really good examination of both suburbia and the objectification of teenage girls

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jemimaesmee's review against another edition

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dark sad 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

1.5

Content Warnings

icefairy's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective relaxing sad 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

5.0

this book can't possibly be written by a man, it feels like younger me at the ages of 11, 14, 15 and 16 all came together in a room to put in their troubles, thoughts, fears and feelings into a book that was then warped into being told by the most unreliable of narrators- obsessed teenage boys. the language flows in a way nothing I've read ever has and the content to description ratio is so perfect for me it feels like a duvet covering me in a cold winter

Content Warnings