Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Guía del club de lectura para matar vampiros by Grady Hendrix

96 reviews

angorarabbit's review against another edition

adventurous 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

2.5

There is a small spoiler regarding a early plot point in this review.

 

TLDR; I’m not really into horror or thrillers so take my review with a grain of salt. Improbable plot device, flat characters, little humour. Just enough interest to keep reading, though I was thinking of dnfing at the 60% point out of frustration. 

 

Mr Hendrix tells the story as a third person narrator from the pov of the female main character. Thus we know almost nothing about the other characters, particularly the male ones. We learn almost nothing about the past of the fmc. Descriptions of places and things are also light. On the other hand the book felt too long to me, I was almost skimming when I got 60% to 80% in. 

 

I have a few complaints about the novel but I’m keeping it to three. 

 

One; If you come home from work one evening and find your elderly female neighbour is viscously attacking your spouse. In fact the neighbour has bitten your spouse’s earlobe off. When your spouse starts voicing suspicions about that neighbour’s great nephew newly arrived to take care of his now deceased great aunt do you ignore your spouse and form a friendship and business partnership with the nephew? Or do you encourage the local police to keep an eye on him and keep him out of your house away from your spouse and children?

Do your suspicions lessen or increase when a rat army invades your nice home and kills your mother? 

 

 

Secondly why is every male in this book either non-existent or a jerk? Yes, I do complain when author’s female characters are poorly drawn. This book has the opposite problem and I’m not happy about that either. 

 

Finally, there was  humour in the first 11 chapters.. The humour disappeared with the rats in chapter 12 and never returned. (Do not read chapter 12 if you have musophobia.) While I wasn’t expecting a Christopher Moore style novel the humour of the first chapters did help to humanise characters some.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Bullying, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Pedophilia, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Dementia, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Body horror, Child death, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Racism, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Vomit, Grief, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Minor: Animal cruelty, Drug abuse, and Medical content

Graphic rats.

happyknitter2020's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny sad tense fast-paced

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

4.5

A female mid life bookclub challenge vampire, all husband's don't support them, children and people living experiencing poverty were more at risk. A fantastic story, enjoyed yhe audio reader, she brought the characters to life.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Dementia, Kidnapping, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

billyjepma's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

2.25

For the first 50-100 pages, I was assuredly in this book's corner. The writing was snappy, the setting sharp, and the looming threat of something sinister palpable. It had me in the palm of its hand, and then only intermittently, and then not at all. Some of that degradation is due to the rises and falls of the suspense, which could be tiresome to wade through since Hendrix doesn't give his reader any space to second-guess the facts of what's happening in the story, lessening the suspense somewhat. It's a narrative decision I want to admire, and I did initially since it firmly places the women driving the story in the right. But after that story humiliated or tortured them for the umpteenth time, I struggled to see the point. 

There are hints of promise, specifically in the strength of female friendship and solidarity, but Hendrix's writing is so rooted in a shallow faux-feminism that it sabotages the book at every turn. For one thing, he can't help but describe women's bodies in detail, even when the context would make such specificity frivolous at best. It's a symptom of a larger problem, though, and only gets worse as the story approaches the climax, where Hendrix resorts to the threat of sexual violence or the act itself to ramp up the tension in ways I found to be distasteful. The book wants to paint a picture of how men have historically abused women, treating them like objects or tools for their pleasure or pursuit of power. I'm all for that, especially in a "vampire" period piece like this. But when that book also has a habit of treating its women the same way as the men it condemns, any semblance of commentary quickly deteriorates.

It doesn't help that the characters are predominantly defined by their genders and the traits stereotypically associated with them. Those aren't bad traits for a character to have, mind you, but I struggle to believe that women in the era were exclusively defined by their roles as wives and mothers. The insistence on defining all these characters by different shades of those characteristics was disappointing, especially since Hendrix failed to give the women any interior lives or depth beyond the basest impulses projected onto them. At the very least, though, he knows his way around the genre, and his fast-paced, zippy writing makes this an easy page-turner. He also has a knack for setting up nail-biting scenarios that gross you out just as much as they keep you flipping pages. Granted, some of those scenarios end up falling into the same problems I had with the rest of the book, but the build-up was there, at least. If Hendrix had more self-awareness about his limits and strengths, this could've been a pulpy banger of a book, but alas.

None of these problems are unique to this book, though—I recognize many of his worst impulses from some of Stephen King's earlier works, alongside plenty of other male horror writers. But we (meaning white men like myself) can do better than this, and it's frustrating when I find books that seem to tell me otherwise.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Gore, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Racism, Sexism, Toxic relationship, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Domestic abuse and Drug abuse

co_d33's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A feminist masterpiece. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Gore, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Cannibalism, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

sannesbooks's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

This was a really enjoyable read. It was easy to read and fast to get through. The book started kinda slow, but once you are halfway you can't stop reading. I appreciated the time jumps in between. I think this was a good way to make the pacing right.

I liked the characters in this book. My only complaint is that the women in the bookclub had kind of the same personalities. This made it sometimes hard to follow, and you will mix up characters. 

I loved the depiction of womenhood / friendship. It was frustrating to read about the sexism and misogyny, but I think it is realistic for that time period and it calls for reflection. It was interesting to see how different characters responded to injustice and misogyny. I also appreciated the description of rich vs poor neighbourhood and white vs colored people, discrimination that is still happening today. I enjoyed to see how the characters reacted to the differences in treatment. 

Patricia's son, Blue, had an obsession with Nazis. I kinda think it is weird to include that because it didn't do anything for the storyline. I thought and wished this was a set up for something bigger but it wasn't and therefore I think this is an unnessecary 'story line'. I think the writer just want to add something to make the kid seem creepy but at the end of the book he portrait as creepy, so there was basically no point.

Another thing that was, in my opinion, only included for shock value was the thigh blood sucking. The vampire only drank blood from the inner thighs of people. In the book, it also clearly states that this blood sucking makes its victims sexually aroused. Also, the victims were naked during this for no reason. Unnessecary in my opinion, especially because his victims were minors! There was also no explaination for why it should have to be done this way, so I think it was just unnessecary.
 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gore, Misogyny, Rape, Sexism, Sexual violence, Blood, Murder, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Animal death, Racism, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, and War

fkshg8465's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.25

Much better than I thought it was going to be, mostly because I found the title so ridiculous. Turns out that the book was a lot of fun to read and that the title is very apropos. It was a little longer than I would’ve liked - I would’ve removed some of the events, maybe even whole chapters, because the first third of the book had me rolling my eyes. But I had enjoyed How to Sell a Haunted House, so I stuck with it, and I’m so glad I did.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

apat's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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? Yes

2.75

It’s a book about community that tries to revindicate housewifes. At the same time, the author decided that

rape and sexual endeavors

were the fittest plot line as punishment for the women in the book… a vampire book. 
To be fair, I did read “The Final Girl Support Group”, so I should’ve known better.
The writing in general is good, just not good enough to ignore the rest.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child death, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual violence, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, and Classism

Minor: Domestic abuse and Drug abuse

kassisup's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Dementia, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Gore, and Blood

Minor: Medical content and Fire/Fire injury

ldyb's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Things to know: this book is satire & commentary. Never in my life has it been this clear! I found several of the juxtaposed phrases to be so CLEAR that I highlighted them. I hope no one reads this book at face value - there is absolutely something pointed about almost every sentence, every chapter, every character. 

TW - In addition, there is gore, there is sexual predation and assault against women and children, there is suicide and death. A lot of this is graphically described, which is rarely necessary, and remains the flaw of the horror category. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Blood, Dementia, Kidnapping, Cannibalism, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, and Classism

kaila_bergmann's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

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

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Drug abuse and Suicide

Minor: Domestic abuse