A review by gunch
Playground by Aron Beauregard

Did not finish book. Stopped at 44%.

You can’t tell me that this wasn’t Kronk and Yzma fan-fiction at one point in the draft process. Also i dont think this author understands how german accents work. There is a cartoonish nazi character who appears one page after the sample. It was like i was duped into believing this book would be interesting. Also the nazi’s dialogue is written with the letter “z” in front of every 5th word or so. Just stupid. The idea behind a sample is to give the reader a taste of the rest of the book, not write an interesting story and then switch to whatever was happening here.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Domestic abuse, Gore, Incest, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Excrement, Death of parent, and Murder

I love transgressive films and books, but they have to actually be made and written well. Otherwise what’s the point? Over explained metaphors, grueling prose, 1-dimensional characters, clunky unnatural dialogue, and just the most bizarre and pointless plot additions imaginable made what seemed like a terrifying descent into violent and sexual abyss really more like the inane ramblings of a first time writer looking to shock and awe and make a vehicle for his scat, STD, and incest fetishes. It’s not that type of content that bothers me. Its that it’s written poorly.