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grace_madeleine's reviews
16 reviews
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
3.5
Ok, so we all know that I love Donna Tartt (one of my fav authors). However, I would say that this is one of her darker reads so def look at trigger warnings before reading. That’s not to say I didn’t like it, which I did. It was very much the middle America (bones and all/ethel Cain???) “aesthetic” that it seems like every “booktoker” wants to see embodied in a book these days. So if you’re looking for that, 👍. That’s to say that it is very different from her other two books. No, it’s not east coast/ dark academia which is so prevalent in the goldfinch and the secret history. This has a very dark undercurrent throughout the entire book, and the fact it is from the third person perspective of a 12 year old girl is so interesting. I did find myself not being able to put the book down at so many times which is great for me (I have no attention span anymore). Some of the scenes made me physically recoil (in a good way) due to how Tartt is SO good at making the reader uncomfortable just through the smallest descriptions, so that’s how I knew this was a good book. If I’m having a physical reaction to a simple conversation and I’m making this face 😨 I know I like it. However, there are some parts which tend to drag a bit, but that’s not too much of a problem. In all, I would say this isn’t my personal favourite book of Donna Tartt’s, but it’s definitely still one worth the read.
Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh
4.0
Ottessa Moshfegh is such a unique author in this generation. Her stories have always held the ability to stay in my head for months, sometimes years after reading them. The way she paints a picture is so special, and a collection of short stories was such a perfect project for an author such as Moshfegh. Her stories may take a while to get used to due to their uncanny quality and sometimes morbid and macabre nature. Reading them is like the equivalent of humans not being able to stop looking at an accident or disaster. It’s something so horrible, yet so intriguing to the point of not possessing the ability to look away.
Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
4.0
“There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it” will probably never leave my mind.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Homophobia, and Grief
Moderate: Death
Minor: Violence and Blood
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
5.0
I feel like my heart has been viscerally scooped out of my body and replaced except it wasn’t replaced correctly like there’s a deep ache there after reading this like it’s touched parts of grief I never expected would be touched by a book
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Racism, Violence, Grief, and War
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, and Bullying
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
4.0
the depiction of young girls and the young boys who secretly covet and worship them are so intriguingly accurate portrayed in this way. Although I see the criticisms of it, along with the fact a man wrote it, it doesn’t make the presentation of how the young, unreliable narrators see these girls who are kept away in a mysterious veil of apparent mysticism according to their young minds inaccurate in any way. While the boys think of them as idealized angels, other accounts describe them as repulsive at times, tracing the ever descriptive nature of youth and the circumstances and time in which these girls live. There is no “female rage” as booktok wants so bad to have, there is only quiet simmering until the conclusion, which we all expect, but when it happens, we are left saddened, feeling like we intimately know these girls, and in the end, it makes us no better than the teenage boys living through the girls vicariously and voyeuristically.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Suicide, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Confinement and Emotional abuse