wyabook234's review
dark
emotional
tense
slow-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? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Murder, Gore, and Sexual content
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, and Misogyny
fangirljeanne's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I don’t know what it says about me that I was sad that this didn’t have a happy ending, but it is what it is.
This is a great horror novel, beautifully grotesque and emotionally raw to an uncomfortable degree. It’s very much more lit fic than in tone and execution than horror or splatter punk, though it absolutely holds its own in both genres. The experience of being a woman, especially one who doesn’t fit the unattainable hypocrisy of socially acceptable feminine ideals, is a horrific mind-bending experience.
Maeve is not unique in her weird or messiness, take out the overt violence and this would be like many other women’s lit narrative about the trauma of living under patriarchy. But here, in the framing of a horror novel this narrative feels more authentic, more autonomous compared to the passive victimhood of a lot of white women’s navel gazing fiction, at least until the end. Maeve felt like she was going to give the cliche narrative of the weird girl, the creepy girl, the femme fatale a newer better ending. One where she embraces that aspects of herself that fear of society tells her to suppress and hate. While she escapes the typical fate of “fallen women” of literature, she is still punished for refusing to conform to society. That’s the only aspect of the story I disliked. It felt like a step back after so many subversive strides forward.
I get it, this is a horror novel. Heartbreak is an important aspect of that genre. But I would also argue that few things are quite as frightening to patriarchy as a villainous woman getting everything she wants including love and acceptance.
Highly recommended to fans of graphic horror and dark humor. If you love the movie May (2002) this book might be for you too.
This is a great horror novel, beautifully grotesque and emotionally raw to an uncomfortable degree. It’s very much more lit fic than in tone and execution than horror or splatter punk, though it absolutely holds its own in both genres. The experience of being a woman, especially one who doesn’t fit the unattainable hypocrisy of socially acceptable feminine ideals, is a horrific mind-bending experience.
Maeve is not unique in her weird or messiness, take out the overt violence and this would be like many other women’s lit narrative about the trauma of living under patriarchy. But here, in the framing of a horror novel this narrative feels more authentic, more autonomous compared to the passive victimhood of a lot of white women’s navel gazing fiction, at least until the end. Maeve felt like she was going to give the cliche narrative of the weird girl, the creepy girl, the femme fatale a newer better ending. One where she embraces that aspects of herself that fear of society tells her to suppress and hate. While she escapes the typical fate of “fallen women” of literature, she is still punished for refusing to conform to society. That’s the only aspect of the story I disliked. It felt like a step back after so many subversive strides forward.
I get it, this is a horror novel. Heartbreak is an important aspect of that genre. But I would also argue that few things are quite as frightening to patriarchy as a villainous woman getting everything she wants including love and acceptance.
Highly recommended to fans of graphic horror and dark humor. If you love the movie May (2002) this book might be for you too.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Murder, Self harm, Terminal illness, Injury/Injury detail, Vomit, Physical abuse, Racism, Toxic friendship, Violence, Alcohol, Body shaming, Grief, Torture, Animal death, Bullying, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Cancer, Child abuse, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Medical content, Sexual assault, Classism, Ableism, Blood, Cursing, Death of parent, Sexual violence, Stalking, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Drug use, Excrement, Rape, Animal cruelty, Body horror, and Chronic illness
randakae's review
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Death, Sexual violence, Gore, Sexual assault, Toxic friendship, Body horror, Cursing, Toxic relationship, and Violence
kkalicky94's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Sexual violence, Murder, Blood, Grief, Kidnapping, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Body horror, Death, Gore, Torture, Violence, and Toxic friendship
Minor: Cannibalism
malusetdenarii's review
dark
funny
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Bullying, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual assault, Violence, Physical abuse, Body horror, Sexual violence, Toxic friendship, Murder, Torture, and Toxic relationship
gloomypanda's review
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Torture, Mental illness, Cannibalism, Sexual content, Toxic friendship, Murder, Violence, Cursing, Rape, Blood, and Alcohol
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Death, Self harm, Sexual violence, Sexism, and Kidnapping
Minor: Animal cruelty, Vomit, and Drug use
connorjdaley's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
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? Yes
3.0
I received the audio from NetGalley for review. This was one that I grabbed solely for the cover. After I was approved, I started seeing a lot of reviews, which definitely bumped it for me.
This novel is about Maeve Fly, a not-so specific “ice princess” at a not-so specific “amusement park” in California. She absolutely loves her job, but probably not for the reasons you’d imagine.
I enjoyed the literary voice in this as it’s almost poised as a good-for-her / finding yourself / meets Dexter-y esque inner-monologue type projection. I also liked how as the character becomes more unhinged, so does her crimes, and so does her public projection of herself. Sometimes literally going in public covered in real blood. Some might find that unbelievable, but I thought it nicely highlighted how people’s general perception is just I accept what they see and rationalize it. The police in the story included.
Other than that though, the character is incredibly narcissistic, completely misunderstanding themselves and the perception they present the world with. It’s arrogance in a not enjoyable way. Though the biggest flop for me, the stake in the heart, is the novels incredibly over-sexualized nature. This is something I’ve mentioned in reviews before, but it seems like such a large chunk of modern horror just uses sex and obscure kinks for whatever propellant it can get as shock value. And while again, I certainly find it “horrific” as it is a ‘horror’, that doesn’t mean I think it’s good or find it enjoyable.
The novel is still on the edge of enjoyability for me though for sure, and Sosie Bacon’s narration was fantastic. It’s quick, and that keeps it readable. Personally a 3/5* for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Cursing, Death, Sexual violence, Murder, Alcohol, Blood, Body horror, Violence, Gore, Kidnapping, and Sexual assault
eisenbuns's review against another edition
dark
tense
fast-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? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Animal cruelty, Addiction, Emotional abuse, Sexual violence, Excrement, Violence, Blood, Cannibalism, Chronic illness, Medical content, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic friendship, Vomit, Grief, Sexual content, Death, Drug use, Body horror, Gore, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Murder, Rape, Drug abuse, Fatphobia, and Stalking
ande_thomas's review
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Maeve Fly is a princess. That is, she is an actress who portrays a popular ice princess at a large, unnamed and—I’m sure—entirely fictional theme park south of Los Angeles. She is also cynical, vulgar, unsympathetic, and struggling to control her violent urges. That’s pretty much all we know at the start of CJ Leede’s debut novel, Maeve Fly.
Even before its release on June 6, Maeve Fly has been building its reputation as a brutal, twisted addition to slasherdom, and we can go ahead and rip that band-aid off right off the bat—it’s a deserving reputation. Leede takes her time in building up to the mayhem, but it’s time well-spent, showing readers what makes Maeve’s brain tick in great detail.
Maeve is refreshingly complex, as far as antiheroes go. She is positively misanthropic, but she loves her job to death, despite it involving day upon day of countless interactions with children and families—a mandatory smile glued to her face. She’s good at it, too. In fact, even her rival and “unofficial” supervisor Liz, has to concede that Maeve, along with her best friend Kate (as the ice princess’s royal sister), garners more positive feedback from visitors than any other princess in the park.
Read more on What Sleeps Beneath!
Thanks to Tor Nightfire for an eARC of Maeve Fly in exchange for an unbiased review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Sexual content, Blood, Sexual violence, Death, Gore, Violence, and Torture
Moderate: Cursing, Toxic friendship, Kidnapping, and Grief
Minor: Terminal illness, Rape, and Toxic relationship
ladymacbeth_1985's review
dark
sad
fast-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
2.25
I received this e-arc from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.
Normally, I have some pithy one-word wrap-up for the book I’m reviewing, but I got nothin' regarding this one. I don’t think you write a book like this expecting everyone to love it, so that’s what’s coming.
The first third of the novel is excellent. The prose is engaging, and I was immediately hooked on the Wednesday-Addams-on-steroids character and mix of dark humour. I wasn’t as keen on the copious descriptions of LA - a city I have never been to and have no desire to visit - but there weren’t too many of them. Maeve was a great balance of demented and understandable. Her life is interesting and intriguing. The author has a fantastic style that is visceral and detailed but moves at a great clip. Honestly, the first third had me hooked.
Unfortunately, I started to lose interest once she started going gah-gah over the guy mentioned in the blurb (it kind of drifts into a Dark Romance at this part), and then the last third just went so off-the-rails and included so much shock value gore it grew tedious. Maeve, in the first third, isn’t a sympathetic character, but she’s at least an interesting weirdo. But when the book got really rapey and torturey and included so many sex scenes (I don't mind sex scenes at all, but I prefer a slow-burn romance), I was no longer invested in her story. The end twist was also very predictable. It's a horror novel, but it's not scary.
Likewise, while Maeve is very intriguing at the start, we never really learn the “why” about a few things. Why does she love her job? Why is she so dependent on Kate’s friendship? I also thought the concept - how she’s a Disney princess during the day but a dark and edgy woman in the evening - wasn’t fleshed out enough to be making any sort of commentary.
If you enjoy really dark novels with lots of gore and sexual content, you will enjoy this (no judgment from me!), but I think I’m done with these edgy books as they seem to be disappointing me as of late. It could be that in my old age, I’ve softened a bit. When I was 21, I probably would have loved this book, but given my nearly four decades on this earth, I’ve seen and read a lot of horrible things, and they no longer shock me but sadden me. There is one particularly gross thing that happens in this novel in the climax that seems like it’s really over-the-top; yet, I read an article about this particular thing happening in real life to a woman while they were being tortured under interrogation. I think because I’ve read about so many awful things in real life, and especially at my old job where I worked in criminal case law, that shock value horror just serves to make me disheartened. Now, if these things were happening in the novel for a social critique or an allegory of a systemic problem in society, it would have worked better for me. But to have these things happen to innocent people, not as a form of justice against someone awful or to make a statement, rubbed me the wrong way. No one who receives violence in this novel deserves it, even remotely so.
As such, a novel about a woman murdering people or harming them in disgusting ways, but with no real “downfall” or “comeuppance” moment (I guess you could argue the ending was such, but I would hardly call that “justice”) makes me wonder who are we to be rooting for in this novel? What is it trying to say? American Psycho, which this has been compared to, was gory too, but it was a comment on corporate culture in comparing the quest for greed and status with homicidal sociopathy. I think the only reason Maeve Fly is being compared to American Psycho (a book I find overblown, by the way) is because she’s someone you wouldn’t expect to be a serial killer, just like Bateman was at the time of publication. Back when American Psycho first came out, part of the resonance behind it was the idea that a serial killer isn’t just some weirdo, but could be someone “successful.” We don’t have that bias anymore.
Another idea I had was that the novel might simply be showing a woman serial killer who is just born bad. This is an increasing trend in media right now that we have women killers or evil women who haven’t been “turned” bad by trauma, but who are just naturally evil. This rise is a response to, perhaps, how many male killers we have in media who haven’t needed to be “corrupted” by anything. Up until recently, there was this latent idea in society that women were inherently good-which is a form of sexism-and having just plain evil women in books and movies today is an attempt to disprove that notion. If that is the purpose of the book, then it definitely hits that mark on that front, though I don’t think that idea is strong enough to carry the entire novel and the torture and rape aspects of it.
I do love things that are subversive and push the envelope but perhaps I just prefer it to be more subtle? As I’ve said, I think the author has definitely talent with their prose and descriptions, so perhaps I’ll check out another of hers in the future.
Normally, I have some pithy one-word wrap-up for the book I’m reviewing, but I got nothin' regarding this one. I don’t think you write a book like this expecting everyone to love it, so that’s what’s coming.
The first third of the novel is excellent. The prose is engaging, and I was immediately hooked on the Wednesday-Addams-on-steroids character and mix of dark humour. I wasn’t as keen on the copious descriptions of LA - a city I have never been to and have no desire to visit - but there weren’t too many of them. Maeve was a great balance of demented and understandable. Her life is interesting and intriguing. The author has a fantastic style that is visceral and detailed but moves at a great clip. Honestly, the first third had me hooked.
Unfortunately, I started to lose interest once she started going gah-gah over the guy mentioned in the blurb (it kind of drifts into a Dark Romance at this part), and then the last third just went so off-the-rails and included so much shock value gore it grew tedious. Maeve, in the first third, isn’t a sympathetic character, but she’s at least an interesting weirdo. But when the book got really rapey and torturey and included so many sex scenes (I don't mind sex scenes at all, but I prefer a slow-burn romance), I was no longer invested in her story. The end twist was also very predictable. It's a horror novel, but it's not scary.
Likewise, while Maeve is very intriguing at the start, we never really learn the “why” about a few things. Why does she love her job? Why is she so dependent on Kate’s friendship? I also thought the concept - how she’s a Disney princess during the day but a dark and edgy woman in the evening - wasn’t fleshed out enough to be making any sort of commentary.
If you enjoy really dark novels with lots of gore and sexual content, you will enjoy this (no judgment from me!), but I think I’m done with these edgy books as they seem to be disappointing me as of late. It could be that in my old age, I’ve softened a bit. When I was 21, I probably would have loved this book, but given my nearly four decades on this earth, I’ve seen and read a lot of horrible things, and they no longer shock me but sadden me. There is one particularly gross thing that happens in this novel in the climax that seems like it’s really over-the-top; yet, I read an article about this particular thing happening in real life to a woman while they were being tortured under interrogation. I think because I’ve read about so many awful things in real life, and especially at my old job where I worked in criminal case law, that shock value horror just serves to make me disheartened. Now, if these things were happening in the novel for a social critique or an allegory of a systemic problem in society, it would have worked better for me. But to have these things happen to innocent people, not as a form of justice against someone awful or to make a statement, rubbed me the wrong way. No one who receives violence in this novel deserves it, even remotely so.
As such, a novel about a woman murdering people or harming them in disgusting ways, but with no real “downfall” or “comeuppance” moment (I guess you could argue the ending was such, but I would hardly call that “justice”) makes me wonder who are we to be rooting for in this novel? What is it trying to say? American Psycho, which this has been compared to, was gory too, but it was a comment on corporate culture in comparing the quest for greed and status with homicidal sociopathy. I think the only reason Maeve Fly is being compared to American Psycho (a book I find overblown, by the way) is because she’s someone you wouldn’t expect to be a serial killer, just like Bateman was at the time of publication. Back when American Psycho first came out, part of the resonance behind it was the idea that a serial killer isn’t just some weirdo, but could be someone “successful.” We don’t have that bias anymore.
Another idea I had was that the novel might simply be showing a woman serial killer who is just born bad. This is an increasing trend in media right now that we have women killers or evil women who haven’t been “turned” bad by trauma, but who are just naturally evil. This rise is a response to, perhaps, how many male killers we have in media who haven’t needed to be “corrupted” by anything. Up until recently, there was this latent idea in society that women were inherently good-which is a form of sexism-and having just plain evil women in books and movies today is an attempt to disprove that notion. If that is the purpose of the book, then it definitely hits that mark on that front, though I don’t think that idea is strong enough to carry the entire novel and the torture and rape aspects of it.
I do love things that are subversive and push the envelope but perhaps I just prefer it to be more subtle? As I’ve said, I think the author has definitely talent with their prose and descriptions, so perhaps I’ll check out another of hers in the future.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Blood, Body horror, Gore, Death, Murder, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Toxic friendship
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