A review by dalinarsreads
The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring

1.0

Wow, this book was not the book for me, at all. A full review will be posted on instagram soon.

Wow, this book was not the book for me, at all. A full review will be posted on Instagram soon.

update with actual mini review

Trigger warnings: self-harm, suicide, miscarriage, STATUTORY RAPE, PEDOPHILIA

okay so, I had some...high expectations going into this book. I mean just look at this cover, it's beautiful. With a creepy atmosphere that reminds me of those horror movies, you find on syfy, I thought I found a winner. Unfortunately, I couldn't be more wrong.

The writing was good... I'll give it that and because of that, I'm quite interested in seeing future works by the author. But I literally felt like this book was just going in circles and getting nowhere. Angel's POV was... confusing at times and I didn't enjoy reading from her as much as I did Mavi's. There wasn't really any character development and at times it was quite confusing (even though yes I know it's supposed to be a horror/mystery, but still.)

One of the things that really brought it down for me was the plot twist that was a complete 180. It changed everything and I will say that it was a clever little plot twist I didn't see coming. Despite that, I don't feel like it worked for this story because after that, might as well throw out the first half of the book and pretend it never happened and not to mention it was SO confusing, I had to re-read a couple of times and still don't understand why. It felt like such a cop-out.

Another big thing for me is the trigger warnings. Yes, I do agree that writers can write what they want, it's not terrible to have triggering content as long as it's done respectfully. But you have to challenge it. And in this case, it wasn't challenged. And I am talking about the statutory rape and pedophilia, and this is where the spoilers come in okay.

So if you don't wanna see spoilers, don't read.
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So basically, the plot twist is that its a game, none of it's real and it's solely for peoples enjoyment and the "others" are the players who upload their consciousness into the game. In the book, the girls who might I add, are between the ages of 10-14/15 tops, report that men touch them at night, and what to the characters/npc's say? Oh okay how wrong let's see what's happening and honestly do nothing about it???? Also, the fact that people upload their consciousness into a game to touch little girls, CHILDREN (idec if it's a game) is just wrong.

And might I add, none of it was challenged. Not to mention one of the teachers 'Mr Lamm' was basically accused of touching the girls, the characters, specifically Mavi, we're like oh no he could never we need to investigate this more, if he did, it's terrible, but how could he? He's a sweet man. Like.... que...??? QUE??? If a little kid comes to you and says this person is touching them inappropriately, you don't look for all the reasons WHy it can't be them. I could honestly go on, but for my sanity, I can't. The pedophilia was not challenged in my eyes and the reasoning for even being IN this book is not okay.