Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

72 reviews

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

siobhanward's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-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

3.0

 This book was disturbing. Without mincing words, there is a pedophile in the book, and his preying on children is mentioned multiple times. Not in great detail, but in enough detail that it is off-putting and may be highly disturbing or triggering to some. So that's your main warning.

Otherwise, the rest of the book was pretty good. As a vampire novel, it was creepy and well-written. Like many Swedish novels, the violence and darkness is turned all the way up to 11. I think this was mostly used effectively, but is definitely a bit stomach-churning.

I liked the book overall. It was different than everything else I've read in the past and kept me engaged. I saw how long it was and assumed that it would take me a few days to get through it, but it only took me one. I couldn't even tell you what I liked about the book other than it pulled me in and I couldn't stop reading. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia and Blood

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

ireneac's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Bullying, Gore, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Blood, and Murder

astre_errant's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Death, Gore, Pedophilia, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Alcohol

helenope's review against another edition

dark tense 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? N/A

2.5

This was a book? I guess? if you want to read something with fucked up characters and really gory scenes, go for it, because other than that it lacks in everything else. Also it only starts getting minimally exciting past the 50% mark.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Rape, Blood, and Murder

lizardgod's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Blood, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Drug abuse, Transphobia, and Trafficking

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

cryscries's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

I watched the original movie first before the book and after reading it I can say it’s pretty faithful to the source material. It was such an amazing read that I didn’t feel like it was 472 pages. It’s dark and emotional and I love the relationship that forms between oskar and eli. I loved reading all the different perspectives of people living in that town and how the events unfolded and connected. Definitely a really good read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Rape, Self harm, Sexual content, Blood, and Murder

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide attempt

I feel like the contents of this book ranges from moderate - graphic. There is a character who is attracted to eli named Hänkan - his perspectives can be very uncomfortable to read because he does go into a bit of detail about his attraction in the beginning of the book when he is somewhat introduced to attempting to r word eli towards the end of the book. Eli’s past holds a lot of trauma but does not glorify it in any way of anything it’s more character background of their past but can also be uncomfortable to read. Bits and pieces in the book talk about suicide and self harm from characters who are being bullied or depressed from oskar and eli— though Virginia is a tw for self harm because of what she is going through in the story.

vixenreader's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

Despite being overstuffed, it has a lot of bite, and pathos. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Pedophilia, Sexual violence, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Outing, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cursing, Drug use, Homophobia, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexual content, and Alcohol

Minor: Racial slurs, Excrement, Vomit, and Abandonment

There is a graphic scene of a young boy being castrated, and the pedophilia in the book is quite prevalent. The gender identity in the book will bring up a lot of issues in terms of representation of trans youth. Plus there is some scenes featuring unintentional urination.