Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

46 reviews

gringolet's review against another edition

dark tense 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

4.0

The gender stuff is. complicated. Mileage may vary on that front. Personally, I enjoyed this book, and while some of the vast array of interwoven story lines are less engaging or emotionally affecting than others, the central relationship between Oskar and Eli really works.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Bullying, Death, Gore, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Stalking, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

jaslen2470's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Pedophilia, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Murder

jbcrue's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

beeping_librarian's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense 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? Yes

3.5

Still unsure what the point was, if there was one, but it was an interesting and unsettling ride.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Bullying, Gore, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Violence, and Murder

samtheoboeguy's review against another edition

challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Blood, and Murder

elvenpanther's review against another edition

dark mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Lindqvist managed to write this in such a way, that despite being uncomfortable at how twisted much of this novel was, I was throughly engrossed and could not put it down. I enjoyed how he wove the story through the view points of several members of the community and how he tied all of those "individual" narratives together.
This novel was dark, and gritty, and explored so much more than "monster" trope. In a way, it focused on how monstrous people could be. How sometimes it's not what goes bump in the night that you need to fear, but instead your neighbor or your classmate. It explored broken people, broken families and broken children and their struggle to navigate the world when they feel alone.
I didn't really know what to expect when starting this, and yes some parts of the novel made me squirm, but overall I enjoyed it. I had watched the Swedish film adaptation after and I will say I appreciate how much more in depth the book went. It made for a much more complex and visceral narrative than the movie.
*As a warning, the book does strongly contain the topic of pedophilia*

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Bullying, Pedophilia, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Medical trauma, and Murder

Minor: Animal death

owlribbon's review against another edition

dark 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Child abuse, Gore, Pedophilia, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

saturnal's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad 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

3.25

Chilling. I really appreciated that this focuses more on the vampire aspect than the romance aspect, the latter of which doesn't really feel tacked on or anything. Some of the grizzlier details left me feeling a little nauseated and i don't know how to word that as a positive so you'll have to trust me on that one 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Violence, Trafficking, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

kaiyakaiyo's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense medium-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? It's complicated

0.5

If you’re into “vampire myth but make it extremely, graphically pedophilic” then this book is for you! I, however, abhorred everything about this. 

Scene after scene of child molestation and frankly unnecessary harm on women and children… the few women characters were there only to be extremely bad mothers or sexual objects… though to be fair, ALL of the characters were extremely unrealistic fucked up caricatures. 

This book was far too long (because of all the pedophilic content shoved in) and had a lot of strange subplots that all came together eventually with no real satisfaction. The only actually interesting thing about this book was how it dealt with Eli’s gender; disgusting castration scene aside, this book was surprisingly faithful to the inherent genderqueer-ness that has existed in vampire myth since the beginning. I’m sure someone could write or has written really interesting papers on gender in this. That’s the only nice thing I can say though, otherwise this was a moderately interesting vampire myth idea squandered on gratuitous trauma porn. What is it with Swedes and pedophilia??? 

Nasty book, the author should be jailed

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Blood, and Vomit

johnsaysjulia's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Blood, Excrement, and Sexual harassment