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A review by liroa15
Ruthless People by J.J. McAvoy
1.0
This book is so, so, bad. It's almost like the author has no conception of how real people actually act and instead decided to base this book on the false reality of a steady diet of mobster films and shock value because that's literally all I can see in it.
McAvoy manages to create a cast of characters that are not just unlikable, they're absurdly so. Every single character in this book is a one-dimensional sociopath. Now, this could be fun, except for some reason none of these sociopaths manages to murder another sociopath, which is absurd. Not a single one of these characters possesses even one ounce of empathy, but they're somehow able to co-exist? Not possible. It's totally unbelievable that someone with as little empathy as Liam, for example, still harbouring his grudge against Neal wouldn't put him in a situation where he would wind up dead at the first available opportunity. But that is exactly what McAvoy wants you to believe.
The violence and the language in this book is also ridiculous. It's like someone told McAvoy that mobsters do bad things and she decided that meant they cursed every other word and tore people apart using cars. I'm not saying they wouldn't or couldn't, but I am saying that McAvoy has 0 understanding of the word restraint, and seemingly spent the entire novel trying to find even more grotesque tortures to describe. This didn't have any effect, however, except for painting a particularly bloody picture that McAvoy fails to realize modern society would not allow. (One of the more important points of the Cosa Nostra, for example, appears to be avoiding police involvement, not courting it like McAvoy describes. She also fails to take into account that killing children in high profile situations rarely endears anyone to the public and would be something the mob would avoid if at all possible.)
This doesn't even touch the casual misogyny of all the characters, or the numerous grammatical errors that existed in my version of this book. I honestly don't understand how this has such a high rating on goodreads.
McAvoy manages to create a cast of characters that are not just unlikable, they're absurdly so. Every single character in this book is a one-dimensional sociopath. Now, this could be fun, except for some reason none of these sociopaths manages to murder another sociopath, which is absurd. Not a single one of these characters possesses even one ounce of empathy, but they're somehow able to co-exist? Not possible. It's totally unbelievable that someone with as little empathy as Liam, for example, still harbouring his grudge against Neal wouldn't put him in a situation where he would wind up dead at the first available opportunity. But that is exactly what McAvoy wants you to believe.
The violence and the language in this book is also ridiculous. It's like someone told McAvoy that mobsters do bad things and she decided that meant they cursed every other word and tore people apart using cars. I'm not saying they wouldn't or couldn't, but I am saying that McAvoy has 0 understanding of the word restraint, and seemingly spent the entire novel trying to find even more grotesque tortures to describe. This didn't have any effect, however, except for painting a particularly bloody picture that McAvoy fails to realize modern society would not allow. (One of the more important points of the Cosa Nostra, for example, appears to be avoiding police involvement, not courting it like McAvoy describes. She also fails to take into account that killing children in high profile situations rarely endears anyone to the public and would be something the mob would avoid if at all possible.)
This doesn't even touch the casual misogyny of all the characters, or the numerous grammatical errors that existed in my version of this book. I honestly don't understand how this has such a high rating on goodreads.