Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Kink: Stories

Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

Kink: Stories by R.O. Kwon, Garth Greenwell

36 reviews

l4urenmurr4y's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

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dummehure's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Blood, Lesbophobia, and Abandonment

Moderate: Body horror, Body shaming, Death, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, and Death of parent

Minor: Violence and Vomit

I've decided to rate each short story by itself, so minor spoilers ahead! But I'd like to say a few words about this book in general. While I love the idea of a collection of short stories about Kink or BDSM in general, I feel like this book didn't satisfy the curiosity that idea sparked at all. A lot of these stories are very loosly baised on BDSM, and sometimes BDSM isn't even an important part within the story. Sometimes I couldn't even find the kinky parts of the story and was forced to think to myself "Is the queerness of the characters the kinky part?" which I truly hope isn't the case because that idea made me violently uncomfortable. I think the best comparison I could come up with is: This book is about kink the way that the Netflix show "Love, Death and Robots" is about love, death and robots. It's not NOT about those things but they aren't the focus of the stories every time. But even though I disliked quite a few aspects and stories in this book I'm still glad a read it and felt like my horizon was widened a bit. Plus it's always a wonderful thing to feel understood by other queer people no matter the circumstances. So here are the reviews of the stories itself, rated on a scale of 1-10 (because I forgot that I can only rate books in a scale of 1-5 on this app): The Cure 7/10 Best Friendster Date Ever 8,5/10 - lighthearted hot fun liked it Trust 5/10 Canada 8/10 - that's literally just a queer slice of life what about that was kinky, am I being sexualized? Oh, youth 7/10 Impact Play 7/10 Mirror, Mirror 9/10 Reach 8,75/10 Gospodar 6/10 Scissors 9/10 The Temple of Horror 8/10 - rollercoaster of a story, beautifully written, it felt both foreign and horrifying and comforting and familiar, it's truly giving the horror of your first queer situationship The Voyeurs 8/10 - it was good but for the second time reading this book i find myself thinking "Where is the kink?" and having to come to the conclusion that it's only in here bc the story is about trans people which is absolutely confusing to me. We aren't a kink?? bro come on. Good story tho, painful and raw and true i can very much relate Emotional Technologies 7/10 - nice read

doubleyou's review against another edition

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dark informative sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.0

I didn’t really like it.

I thought it wasn’t that good and at first the first few stories were intriguing but I got to one story where it had a SA and I didn’t know if this was part of the theme of the book since it’s about kinks. And I guess I wasn’t quite prepared for the brutality of the scene but it just turned me off for the rest of the book

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motnaty's review against another edition

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2.0

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rosalind's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

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starwitness's review against another edition

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Started off steamy but then it was like three or four cis hetero stories in a row that left me feeling uninspired and bored :( I wanted this to be more gender expansive inclusive - maybe try to pick it up again.

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sakisreads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

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

2.5

I really wanted to like this short story collection more than I did 🥲 Unfortunately I wasn’t gripped. However, I have highlighted the ones I did like below:

‘Oh, Youth’ got me in my feelings 🥺 I can imagine it’s hard to navigate a three person relationship, especially when with one of the members it’s meant to be strictly transactional…

‘Mirror, Mirror’ was quite fun. There was a lot of excitement from the get go, which I really got into ✨

‘The Voyeurs’ was probably my favourite. Although harrowing in some aspects,

what with Mr. Harris being a transphobic prick 😫,

I felt real intimacy and love between Belèn and Omar ❤️ I wanted to give them both big hugs!

2.5 out of 5 stars for me on this one ✨ Content warnings also posted below.

Thank you 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

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archiveofrasa's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

3.0

Honestly, this read was to see how explicit content differs from fanfiction and original work. Only really liked 4 stories, (by Larissa Pham, R. O. Kwon, Brandon Taylor and Carmen Maria Machado, but Kim Fu's Scissors was nice too.)

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wngwendy's review against another edition

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2.5

some stories are amazing, and some of them fell very flat.
Read the tw's before starting this books!

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tbagherlee's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced

Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

I wanted more from this book - maybe a collection of short stories isn’t for me because it’s such a mixed bag. There were a few I liked - The Cure, Reach, Voyeurs - but overall I was getting the feeling that some nuance was missing, and the literary elements of some of the stories made it difficult to understand what was going on. I did like how queer it was.

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