Reviews with content warning for Body horror - Cursed Bread

The title alone had me interested in this book. It's right up my alley in terms of deranged female narrators taking us through an unsettling ride.

The story shifts between Elodie's POV as a baker's wife, and her letters to her friend Violet. It starts plain and quite boring, unravels very slowly, and then drops the plot twist over a few pages in a nightmarish daze.

The main theme is obsession, the need to live as someone else, and steal their life, their love, their intimacies. It's a heavy focus on masochistic, degrading fantasy, born from boredom, neglect, and Elodie's invisibility as a woman and sexual being.

The writing is one long fever dream that gets more twisted and confusing as you go. It was hard for me to find footing, which is probably purposeful. Even the time period was hard for me to figure out. This kind of verbose, vague inner monologue writing style often loses me, but give it a try if you're into that, as well as really demented characters.

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ladybergart's review against another edition

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4.5

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ariparip's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

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

2.75

TL;DR: extremely slow; horny, but not in the fun way; dark and descriptive, inching towards profundity without ever getting there.

I was so excited to read this book and was so disappointed. It is extremely slow. The audiobook is only 5 hours and I listened on 1.25 speed but it still took me over a month to finish. I kept reading thinking the pace might pick up and because I was interested in the characters, but the prose was flowery without real substance.

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capacitorofflux's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad medium-paced

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

3.5

The character of Violet reminded me a lot of Indigo from “The Last Tale of The Flower Bride” which reads similarly to this. Despite being a short book, most of the first half or even the first 2/3 seems unnecessary.

A chilling, mad tale based on a real life event.

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erisouls's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

If you enjoyed reading Bitter Orange you will enjoy this book. It felt strangely similar at times. I liked it enough to read it all in one sitting but I wouldn’t pick it up again, nor do I think I would tell anyone else to read it.

I was incredibly disappointed that Violet and Élodie never hooked up. I realize that thematically, the ending made sense, however I was crushed hearing how cruel they were to her. Perhaps I am the gullible one for thinking they were ever interested.

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