Reviews with content warning for Murder - Everything the Darkness Eats

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Everything the Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca

22 reviews

stardustlex's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

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

3.5

What was this book about? idk. Did I enjoy it? idk.

I found the volume of rape and/or sexual assault scenes a little troubling, especially since there was very little allusion to them throughout the book or the summary, so I felt a little blindsided by them.

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matty_joe319's review against another edition

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dark sad tense fast-paced

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

1.5

I was really excited about this book upon seeing the cover, reading the description, even reading the prologue. I had heard great things about LaRocca’s short stories, so thought the book would be good. Unfortunately, it was a lot of edge with not much substance. I loved the idea of a queer religious-critique small town horror story, but this did not have much depth of commentary or much of a clear point of view. Characters often act without motive or - at best - without intelligence, and LaRocca seems to think that suffering is the same as plot. There is a lot of suffering and there is not much plot - or at least not much that is particularly engaging. LaRocca’s prose itself is full of metaphors that feel too literal and formal narration that ends up feeling more pretentious than creepy. The opening prologue and chapters had so much tension and promise and it was a shame to see the rest of the book felt unbaked in comparison. LaRocca has a great imagination - I just hope he can find a better editor or more restraint in future works.

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librocrone's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

2.75

It was mostly well-written, though I had some problems with word choice and placement that I thought an editor should've caught and adjusted for. It also did one of my least favorite things in modern literature, where they describe something in a way that makes it perfectly clear what's going on but in a metaphorical or creative way, and then follow that up with a blunt sentence that leaves nothing to the imagination to clarify for people with low reading comprehension skills. So. That was a bummer and really made an impact on my star rating.

There were a lot of aspects of the book that I just personally didn't care for or enjoy.I didn't particularly care for the story arc and the resolutions. I didn't particularly enjoy the characters, particularly Ghost. I wish the villain had been given a bit more motivation - the first scene sets up an interesting potential but I didn't feel like the following execution of the character matched up to that potential. Also I'm so sick of the name Crowley in things.

It was okay. I want to give Things Have Gotten Worse a go to see if it's just this book I wasn't that into, or if LaRocca just isn't an author for me.

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quinnxing's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

3.0

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emlen's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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whatwasmissing's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

was not expecting this to run the full gamut of content warnings but there you go.

i quite liked the slow build of the mystery in the first half, particularly the missing townsfolk and the charming devil.
the last 30% or so was so incredibly graphic that it was hard to get through. the resolution after that did feel pretty rushed.

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novellearts's review against another edition

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2.0

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librarymouse's review against another edition

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dark 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

2.0

This book didn't make much sense. So much of it was left unexplained and there was a lot of deeply confused religious piety paired with the desire to kill God. Poor execution in the storytelling conflated queerness and disability with monstrosity. At least I'm hoping it's poor execution of content and not intentional. Giving the bad guy AIDS was ... a choice.

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kaiyakaiyo's review against another edition

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dark sad tense fast-paced

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

1.0

Tw// this book contains a pretty detailed rape and hate crime sequence, along with pervasive homophobia. a dash of internalized ableism (?) peruse at your own risk

For the first 170 pages I would have said this book, while very very very much not my cup of tea, was at least written okay. The last 30 or so pages completely wrecked that with the handwaviest retcon ending I think I’ve ever seen. I closed the book and made a sound I can only textually describe as ????????? any amount of mounting unknowable horror became completely absurd and ruined an already pretty wobbly narrative

I disliked reading this book a lot, and the ending was shit, but I can’t say it was bad per se… I just liked absolutely nothing about it personally

the characters feel dropped into their own universe, and they make very little sense in the context of their town or each other. The neighborhood apparently hired homophobic hicks to beat the daylights out of a gay couple that moved in months ago in broad daylight, one of which is a cop, but the extremely flamboyant rich recluse just kites around town in a rolls royce? said gay couple is trying to adopt a child and “blend in” in HateCrime, USA for completely unexplained reasons? ghost … he just felt like an OC someone made and didn’t flesh out on tumblr? the fucking evil ferret thing?? what goes on. Very much short book syndrome, none of the characters or settings feel complete
the “cosmic horror” fell pretty flat for me; there’s only so many times you read about a floating orb before it wears off. its power show at the end was frankly laughable, though i cheered @ the couple making it out alive! nothing about the rituals or kidnappings (weirdly blasé compared to the truly violent bits) spooked me even a little. the only horrifying parts of this book were the violent homophobic home invasion and graphic gang rape and stabbing. those are pretty real life horrors though, so this read didn’t really feel like I was reading a horror book, just a really awful Twitter thread about world events with a weird spiritual ad in the middle. I don’t mean to cheapen the deeply traumatic and trigger events here; they were heartbreaking to read. my point is that these were the only events in the book to evoke any sort of reaction from me, and that reaction was a pretty familiar mix of dread/sadness/nausea that comes with hearing about bad things happen to fellow queer people. not exactly the fun spine-tingler read I was after. I HAVE to start checking storygraph warnings before grabbing books that sound vaguely interesting
the weird aside into the raging homophobic rapist and killer’s child molestation backstory… it added virtually nothing to the book. if we were going to get into “nuance” about why this town is full of vicious bigots, more pages should have been spent actually showing other townspeople. we met like 4. as it stands, it felt very random juxtaposed with the brutal stabbing that followed it. There’s some muddled point about trauma begetting trauma, but we just didn’t spend enough time on the moment for it to evoke any more thought than an SVU episode plot point compared to the other events of the novel. why include it at all ?
the writing style… it moved quickly, that was nice, but frankly each sentence felt like it relished in the violence being conveyed. gross, almost greasy language, too many similes, major overuse of the words “monster” and “guilt”, overall not fun on the eyes to make up for the lackluster content. the pages were also distractingly ugly. why the background. why. is this a 2009 MS word book report?

Not a good read, and I should’ve guessed that by how much time was spent making the book itself pretty. do in fact judge overly stylized books by their cover!

maybe people more wigged by cosmic horror would like this? people who dig social violence horror (is that a thing?) idk. adding this author to my do not read list bc frankly nothing about this made me even slightly curious about other work. chop

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annathechaoticreader's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

I am in absolute awe of this book. It has all of the things I love: literary prose, interesting characters, grief-filled religious themes, queerness, and horrifying & grotesque content. It's one of the most poignant horror novels I've read in a very long time and one that I will be thinking about for a long while. It is absolutely brilliant and I'm just so floored by it, absolutely recommend.

"For Ghost, his body was nothing more than a compost heap - a crude patchwork of abused anatomy that even the most impulsive surrealist wouldn't dare commemorate on canvas. Ghost knew well he was a monster, a horrible mutation handmade by grief." page 19

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