Reviews with content warning for Blood - Jaws

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Jaws by Peter Benchley

33 reviews

hannuhreads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense slow-paced

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

2.0

2 stars.

🦈 The vibes:

A classic
Thriller / horror
Unlikable characters
Relationship drama

🦈 My thoughts:

Where do I even begin? Storygraph told me I wouldn’t like this one and once again Storygraph was correct. 2 stars feels generous- but I will say it’s not that this book is written poorly. It’s just that I disliked almost everything in this book.

If this book was written to show how terrible humans are- then it did that. But otherwise- I don’t think this book gave me anything good. I’ve seen online a lot of attempts at explaining the moral of the book; some say it’s about fear, others say it’s about nature, and more say it’s about predators (ie human). For me- the best I can take away from this novel is that it shows just how flawed humans are and how deep greed runs in our blood. Almost every character exhibited deep selfishness and greed. But enough with the philosophical chat. Now onto my unfiltered thoughts.

Theres a shark, sure. But mostly there’s a lot of bad behavior here. The shark is almost the hero compared to the rest of the characters. Sigh.

Ok. So let’s just jump into the various categories (and how they didn’t work for me):

This book is pretty gory and gross. There’s tore up bodies from the shark- limbs, blood, and guts. It’s just nasty. I don’t recommend snacking while reading this one.

The gore is probably the least gross thing to mention. Overall- it’s just gross in all the ways. Like mentioning the police chief Brody dreaming of when he’s in highschool groping a girl in the stairwell or how he’s married but feels things when he sees young blonds in the beach running bouncing around. Or talk about teenage boys grinding into the sand to get their jolly’s. See. Gross.

But ultimately I was disgusted by Ellen’s behavior. She says all girls fantasize about being a prostitute and sleeping with a bunch of men …. And that she specifically fantasizes about being raped. A whole scenario she explains in detail. Gross, guys. Gross. I absolutely don’t want to hear about this, Ellen. Nobody does.

Furthermore - cheating and affairs is something I don’t enjoy to see. Flirting with married people entertaining flings. Bleh.

There’s elements of prejudice/racists comments. I didn’t enjoy this.

There’s mobs, animal cruelty, and almost every other CW out there for this book. It’s just a big yikes in all the ways.

Specifically - amongst others - a baby dolphin and a cat is killed. I really disliked this book. I rest my case.

I don’t know that this would be considered “open door” necessarily but there’s enough explicit descriptions throughout that I’d go ahead and consider it as such.

Note: open/language

Check CW for this. It’s extensive.

Content Warnings

infinite_finite's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

woodsybookworm's review against another edition

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dark tense 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

2.0

What was that!? Maybe it'd be rated higher for me if I hadn't grown up with the movie and fallen in love with that first but still!!!!

Things I liked:
- the detail of the shark attacks
- the few moments we actually see the shark (this book was more about Hooper and Ellen's affair than the freaking shark)

Things I didn't like:
- the affair subplot (main plot?)
- the shark being described as "the fish" Even other characters in the book say that it's odd when the shark is described that way but that's how it's described for the ENTIRE book 🐟

Other thoughts:
- Vaughn should have been eaten by "the fish". Why did he get to skip off into the sunset? He was a terrible person.

Maybe my nostalgia for the movie is blinding me, but I was not a fan of this book at all.

Content Warnings

jpolito's review against another edition

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adventurous funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Content Warnings

ghoulishshark's review against another edition

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

2.0

I’m so glad that I never bought a copy of this book and just borrowed it from the library. I would never recommend this. If you love the Jaws movies like I do save yourself the time.

The only good parts were the few scenes with the shark. I was expecting this to be a lot like the movie but this was like 90% about infidelity. The only reason I’m not rating this lower is that I don’t hate this book, I’m just
extremely disappointed.

Content Warnings

linejoyreads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

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

3.25

Content Warnings

thebearnest's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.5

Content Warnings

itsjustgrumpy's review against another edition

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I'm not even an hour in and we've had an F slur and the mention of a black man r*ping 6 white women. I'm.

Content Warnings

hjb_128's review against another edition

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adventurous tense fast-paced

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

3.0

Content Warnings

trippyotter's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-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? Yes

5.0

Next month, February, celebrates the 50th ANNIVERSARY of the book release! *mind blowing*

I'd been wanting to read the book for some time, and I was trying to hold out until the anniversary month, but I had just finished a book and... Let's just say, OMG! It's soooo much better than the movie! And I'm soooo disappointed by what was not incorporated into the movie, too!

But if they ever remake JAWS, which they should never, never, never do... They seriously need to include some of the left-out plot details!

I will say, that I read White Shark last year and thought, "ok, this is good, but it's not amazing..." and was questioning if I should read JAWS. Well, if you've read any of Benchley's other books and you're not sure about JAWS, you should definitely read it!

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