Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Country Will Bring Us No Peace

I think this would’ve been marginally better if I could read French; it felt like some of the prose was lost to translation.

That being said, this was super underwhelming & kinda felt like a high schoolers attempt at writing ominous literary horror. Extremely choppy and disorganized with really promising passages every so often. The premise makes the antennae seem much more important than it is, and there is very little horror in this book. why people are recommending this in horror lists is beyond me. even calling it a thriller is tenuous. it’s mostly just depressing & makes less than 200 pages feel endless in a bad way

not for me. also, this isn’t included in the rating but the ebook formatting was ABYSMAL; not sure who to talk to about that but yeah. did not do the cover or the typeface justice

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hotkoolaidpotato's review

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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stephen_reads's review

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3.0

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angleslist's review against another edition

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3.25

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elysianbud's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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

3.0

Very prettily written with some lovely turns of phrase. Eerie atmosphere. Predictable plot, but I think that's the point--it's tragic, you know how it ends because it tells you near the beginning, the interest is how they get to that conclusion. Characters are not nice people at all though, makes it very hard to care about them.
Short, quick read.

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kimberleydawn's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.5

Devastating but doesn’t leave you depressed. Hopefully.

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bratatouille's review

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.5

Holy shit this was stunning. For being such a short story, its impact is. Dang. It’s unsettling and lyrical. It handles grief in a way I haven’t seen depicted. This is the sort of book that grabs hold of you quickly. It’s incredibly foreboding and there is a darkness steeped deeply into every character. It has mild aspects of surrealism which, as we’ve all learned by now, is kinda my jam. However, it’s not the level of having to heavily suspend your disbelief. It’s a speculative, weird, ominous jewel hidden in the corners of indie publishing. I am docking it like HALF a star because I thought one of the reveals was lackluster. Although, I am not mad about it. I seriously am not going to forget this book I might reread it again soon just to reprocess.

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