Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

Guía del club de lectura para matar vampiros by Grady Hendrix

174 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.

tiernanhunter's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Dementia, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Murder, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal death, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Fatphobia, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Excrement, Grief, Death of parent, and Alcohol

Minor: Body shaming

marissagero's review against another edition

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious 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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Infidelity, Misogyny, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Vomit, Dementia, Grief, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

gretchenbell's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious 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

2.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Blood, Suicide attempt, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, 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

bites_of_books's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-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

3.75

This was quite a surprising book for me, in many ways. Previously I've loved How to Sell a Haunted House and did not like Final Girls Support Group so, this was supposed to be in tie breaker. I find myself in the middle. I think this book had a great atmosphere for a book that brings horror into suburbia. I did not love how Mrs. Greene was more of a secondary character and would have loved for her to be the main character here (especially since she ends up doing most of the work herself). I did like the discussion on race and privilege, but there could have been some more action in giving Mrs. Greene more agency than she had, instead of making her to passive until Patricia finally decided to do something. 
Overall a good book for the fall season but be prepared for really horrific scenes dealing with abuse (of all kinds), vermin, gore, etc. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

lilacvictim's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, and Blood

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Terminal illness, Violence, Dementia, Kidnapping, Cannibalism, Stalking, Suicide attempt, and Classism

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Infidelity, Vomit, Death of parent, and Gaslighting

dorin_d's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

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

4.0

I enjoyed reading this book, even though many parts of the book stressed me out. I was shocked to find out Grady Hendrix was a man, as he was able to capture the gaslighting and disrespect the housewives experience with their condescending husbands, and how extremely undervalued the female domestic labour is. I was frustrated on behalf of Patricia, who made many attempts to protect her children and the community around her but faced resistance from the very people she was trying to help. Hendrix has a talent in writing horror, as the scenes with the insects and rodents made me squeamish and I had to skip ahead. The only disappointment was that I was expecting this book to have strong female friendships, with these undervalued mothers and wives realizing what they have in common and joining together to defeat the enemy; and while it’s true that

the ladies worked together to dismember James Harris at the end

I was disappointed at how wishywashy the ladies were, and how they

ridiculed and betrayed their friend Patricia many times until Slick was attacked and required her guilt tripping while she was dying for them to ultimately work together

. I believe if Patricia and Ms Greene had worked together from the start, this book would have been a lot shorter. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore

Moderate: Death

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Infidelity, and Suicide attempt

im_basil's review against another edition

dark mysterious 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? No

Horrified of vampire-like creatures but equally as horrified, if not more, by the complete dismissal of a woman’s existence.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Blood, and Murder

Moderate: Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Suicide attempt, and Death of parent

Minor: Domestic abuse and Infidelity

krumanda's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

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

2.0

Started off fantastic, got icky, 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Rape, Sexism, Suicide, and Murder

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Racism, Sexual violence, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism