A review by marslotus
Playground by Aron Beauregard

dark emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

I cannot express how disappinted i was with this book, so here's me making an attempt.

To start off, if I had a quarter for every time I rolled my eyes while reading, I could probably pay for my groceries. I believe the book was trying to do something clever, or just for the sake of writing explicit scenes, by not adhering to traditional story structure when introducing the antagonists and their motivations. We are seemingly meant to view the character Rock Stanley as the main character (I only assume so because the book starts and ends with his perspective) despite the fact he is an obstacle for the cast we are supposed to root for, therefore making him an antagonist (“his” side are the ones issuing most of the narrative challenges, not the children/parents who are facing them). We're shown through his detailed narration the horrible situation he has been raised in and how he longs to be free of it, as well as well as his abuser's motivation and history for why she's doing these things to him and to the protagonists. Showing these thoughts from the very beginning as opposed to discovering them alongside the protagonists leads to the issue of padding, something the book's middle suffers greatly from. The antagonists are already on the precipice of change (or stagnation in Geraldine's case) and are simply waiting for that last push towards either the dark or light, something that only comes at the end of the book. This creates scenes that are an absolute chore to return to over and over with the antagonists restating the same things they're feeling with different words. I feel like this could be easily rectified by focusing more on the protagonists experiences with the antagonists and find out their backstories either ⅓ or halfway through the story. This way, there's more things for the parents to do in the middle than cry or scream at each other and Rock thinking some form of “Maybe I'm on the wrong side” again and again.
The fact that Molly is able to piece together that Rock is a victim is so ridiculous to me because even though we the audience knows hes been horribly abused, she uses such little evidence to come to the same conclusion. If I was in her situation, I'd be pissed at him for only deciding to defy Geraldine after all of my children have been killed. I would not know his internal struggle and the fact that from the parent's perspective he changed his mind out of no where should infuriate them!


Additionally, this book has a serious problem with telling instead of showing. From the moment the author decided to describe a 7-year-old girl as sadistic, I was so curious how that description would have been built upon,
especially thinking about how she could be an unexpected competitor against Tanya in Geraldine's twisted perspective. Tanya may have been smart, but perhaps Sadie would be the only one with the headspace to be Geraldine's protégé is the thought I had the entire book.
But it seems that such a strong word would mean nothing and would never be touched upon again. It annoyed me because not one time do we see Sadie act out of line or abnormally from a standard little girl, we're simply told she's sadistic because the author didn't feel it necessary to create real examples. There's so many more examples of this borderlining on comedic in such an unpurposeful way. The fact that the author couldn't show us how evil Dr. Fuchs is by his deeds alone,
but instead has to throw in the fact that he's a literal nazi and compares the suffering of the children to the suffering he saw in concentration camps is so cartoonish,
I literally could not believe what I was reading.

This book very rarely struck fear or horror in me which I find so upsetting because I love being horrified. I will give the author the fact that he's talented in describing the gore and injury these characters go through as well as establishing traits that make me care and hate certain characters (though the “telling not showing” issue occasionally arises in the latter aspect). I just wish it was all structured a bit differently, that horror was the utmost goal of the narrative and not a simple gross-out attempt.

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