Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Any Man

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Any Man by Amber Tamblyn

17 reviews

brookeklebe's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
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

4.75

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pranphetamine's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

Uncomfortable read, but eye-opening. There is a lot of sensitive material in this book, so definitely be in the right mental headspace before reading this. The marriage of social commentary and mixed media viewpoints is done really well. What stuck out the most to me was the writing style. It’s so beautifully written. Also, the audiobook paired with reading the physical book is an even more immersive experience (highly recommend doing it this way). Looking forward to explore more of Amber Tamblyn’s work. (Fun fact: Amber Tamblyn is an actress! She’s been in The Ring, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and other pretty big named stuff. It’s always cool to see creatives shine in different mediums.)

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acg2285's review

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dark

2.0

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itsalina's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-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

4.0

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erica_reads_things's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-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? It's complicated

5.0

I reeeeally loved the voice and style of this book. I came into it fully expecting an everyday novel style but was quickly surprised and sucked into the flow of poetic vision among such a hard topic. So well done, I could not put this book down. Every character had such a unique experience, reaction, and coping mechanism to what they experienced. Just wow. So well done, I can't believe I didn't read this sooner.

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dee_elizabeth's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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chloseencounter's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

Any Man was a stunning and unique experience. I’d 100% recommend the audio book because it’s extremely immersive.

I really enjoyed hearing all the different POVs of the antagonist’s victims, this was a very raw look into all the various outcomes that can come from surviving sexual assault, weather it’s dealing by humor, family, control, emptiness, self destructive behavior, or even suicide. While the characters were interesting and their storylines were heartbreaking, the most special thing to me about this novel is the look at what women so often deal with when faced with sexual violence but through the eyes of a man. Unfortunately female victims of sexual assault are all too common, we hear about it so much in fact, our society has become desensitized to the sexual abuse women face and how it’s handled by the public. Flipping the narrative and using men as the victims not only opens up an important conversation about men who have experienced sexual violence and how they are treated but also made the subject feel much more shocking. Then I suppose we can ask ourselves…why is that? Why is being sexually assaulted as a women so commonplace that it doesn’t feel nearly as gut wrenching to read?

Spoiler

The most eye opening part in my opinion was the very last bit, when our serial rapist responds to the journalist, in which she replies with a lot of grotesque language about how a women might think about men as essentially prey or even nonhuman. Then she sends the same exact paragraph replacing the pronouns with she/her, it was sort of appalling to see how different those paragraphs felt right next to one another. Why one was shocking and the other…felt sort of normal. As a women it was easy for me to read the paragraph and think “yea that’s just how men often think of us”, and yet the same exact paragraph but with men as the group being preyed upon felt much more abhorrent.

At the end of the day, I think that ultimately there wasn’t one predator but multiple women predators. The story seemed to lump these people into one frightening amalgamation of a women because how could society believe that there may be multiple women out there preying upon men, it must be a repeat offender. However, when a women is attacked it could literally be “any man”, which is a very smart way to make a statement about how both male and female victims of sexual violence are seen unfairly by the general public.

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