Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

15 reviews

3eggomelet's review against another edition

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

1.5

Yes, I read the whole thing. I ordered all three books in Japanese and referred to them throughout my reading. 
The premise and concept of this book carried me through. I wanted to know what would happen. I'm not gonna say it wasn't worth it, but I would recommend against reading this if you're not already super interested.

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pinksreads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75


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qstew's review against another edition

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dark 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? It's complicated

4.0


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rafagina's review against another edition

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

1.0

Slow, repetitive and predictable. On top of that, every female character is written either in cringe and belittling ways or downright horrendously misogynistic. Every single chapter there are gratuitous sexual descriptions and abusive episodes happening that add nothing to the story. If this is Murakami I don't know why people recommended it so much.

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sumaiyaa's review against another edition

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I started it off pretty excited, and it was the most expensive book I had brought for myself. 
As soon as I reached around 100 pages, I knew this was not for me. Too much sex scenes, sexualizing women (sometimes men), mentions weird kinks which got absolutely no connection with the main plot. Halfway through the book the description got so repetitive and boring. MCs thoughts were overly emphasized. The plot kept stretching like rubber band, then suddenly snapped and hit my face. I realized I cannot do this to myself anymore. 
Another thing is the characters. Extremely dry and unlovable. Sure, sad thoughts and imaginations are inevitable but ever heard of "normal" thinking? I personally could not see any character development, just two MCs being carried on with the flow. No self-will or self-esteem. I also could not find any "average" character until 800 pages at least. The nearest one would be Komatsu ig. 
Although I must say, Murakami's imagination was impressive. Two moons and new world slowly taking over reality (idk what is the reality anymore tbh) inspirations from Famous authors like Goerge Orwell. But I think that was made too apparent. It seems like every character had read all classic books which was unbelievable for me. Personally I only know one person who'd read at least single one (except for pride and prejudice lol) 
Reading 1q84 was like running on a round track. There was no prominent goal or conclusion. Or even Moral. I know for sure that if I had finished this book I'd ask myself "so what was the author's point?" Maybe there are readers who would enjoy based on the process only. But for me and I am sure for most of you guys, I need a lesson, maybe even a point learned, just like a hunter brings a catch back home. 
Keep in mind that I overlooked cliches like "first love" of both MCs during primary school, who are still chasing that and it's been more than a decade. How can a girl grabbing your hand for 20s make you fall for her for 15 yrs (or more)?? Without even meeting once after that? She must have emitted some radiation or woteva into your brain when you guys made the eye contact. looks like I  have ended up ranting about this as well  šŸ˜‚ 
So yeah, in conclusion I could not finish it. I don't normally DNF books but this was not it. It's my 2nd ever DNF. My standards aren't high, it's just that when bad (it's a general term ik) overrides goodness, I do not find it worth my time. 
Thanks for reading guyz. 

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kibiiiariii's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious tense slow-paced

3.0


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madleina's review against another edition

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

4.0

amazing storytelling butā€¦
  • difficult portrayal of women
  • very heteronormative
  • sexual remarks concerning minors

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anxiousspaghetti's review against another edition

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mysterious 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

0.5

For the love of all the godā€™s on this planet and beyond, do not read Murakami. His books ainā€™t worth it, especially 1Q84.

Frankly, to this day it baffles me that the book series above is labelled a love story and that people give him so much credit for the weird disgusting mess he produces.

The protagonists in 1Q84 hardly show any chemistry (so much for being in love??). They only met once when they were children and don't even talk much with or to eachother. Most of all, the fetish of describing young girls body shapes (throughout almost every book of his) and them taking part in sexual acts obviously are evidence of pedophilic and rapey fantasies/tendencies, you name it.

There are plenty of other much better sci-fi/ mystery/ magic realism books you can and should read. 
Advice from s.o. who has actually read his books and kept being unimpressed with his works.


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chrisljm's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.0

I have so many things to say (all negative) but Iā€™m gonna try my best to not make this too long lol. But this book was so goddamn long and boring. Starting this book was so hard, it took me about 3 weeks just to read 300~ pages and Iā€™m usually a pretty fast reader. I had to switch to the audiobook because I just couldnā€™t get through the book otherwise. The audiobook definitely made the book easier to read but it also made it worse because it vocalized and brought to life these characters who were pretty insufferable in my opinion. 

No wonder this book was originally released in three parts because I genuinely donā€™t think there is any reason this book shouldā€™ve been 1500+ pages (ebook) long. It definitely couldā€™ve been reduced a third of its length because there were parts that were so lengthy and repetitive, and just dragged on for seemingly forever. There was a whole ass scene where the narrator went over the complete instructions of how a pregnancy test worked, what the results shown meant, as well as the science behind it. I think if just the sentences that mention breasts were cut out, that alone could reduce the book by at least 1-2 chapters. (After a quick ctrl+f, breasts were mentioned an astounding 77 times)!

Iā€™ve heard plenty of times before that Murakami is terrible at writing women, but heā€™s genuinely so terrible at it that I canā€™t even get mad. In my opinion he should just stop including female characters in his books completely. And if he wanted to have a romance arch, he should just consider having those characters be gay, because writing this sentence, ā€œAomame mourned the deaths of these two friends deeply. It saddened her to think that these women were forever gone from the world. And she mourned their lovely breastsā€”breasts that had vanished without a trace.ā€ is insane to me. 

The book also contained so many content warnings. Literally any tw you can think of, itā€™s most likely included. Luckily, Iā€™m not adverse to reading things that contain content warnings, for the most part, but the stuff in this book definitely made me uncomfortable. And if youā€™re someone who hates sexual assault being used as a plot device, definitely donā€™t read this. 

And since Iā€™m on the topic of content warnings, the one that I sensed from the beginning was an adult minor relationship. I also just want to point out that an adult talking about a minorā€™s chest and ā€˜beautiful curvesā€™ is already disgusting, but it doesnā€™t cancel out just because he throws in that there is no sexual meaning. However, out of all the foul parts I read (there were many) the one that was the most revolting to me was a scene where these two characters found themselves waking up naked together and there was a descriptive contrast made where one of the things being compared was referred to as ā€˜adult penisā€™. Iā€™m sure you can guess what the opposite thing being described was. Having to read that full scene made me want to die. 

There were so many times throughout the book where I wanted to dnf, because I have truly never disliked a book more than this one. But above all, more than disliking this book, I am a hater, and  so I finished it even though I wanted to unalive myself the whole time, so that I could properly write this review. 

TLDR:
Badly written female characters
Too many mentions of breasts
CW: adult minor relationship, sexual assault/rape as a plot device, incesty (mommy issues), suicide, sex scenes
Unnecessary sex scenes
Long and boring

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ajhoppel's review against another edition

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

4.5


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