Ceraphina
Writing is very sparse - and conversational, written like it was just typing out first thoughts in your head. Nothing made the world feel special and I like the ideas of how absolutely filthy this could of been but I hate sex scenes like these. They just give nothing. It's giving young person who just learned about all the naughty sex out there and decides to write a one shot fanfic.
This is my second novel by the author, my first being ‘Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke'
I defend that novel quite a bit. My reason being that even for as short as it is, it's still quite an intimate portrayal being two characters and for me that was a exciting feat.
However I do not think that there's enough... erm, talent for a lack of a better word here, to bring this premise to life with as many characters involved. It became hard to find enjoyment within this when the characters were so copy paste think experiments.
I did however love some of the visual scenes and the daughter. I probably would of preferred this more if the daughter and mother had more page time and a coherent timeline of exploring the trauma between the two.
My other gripe is the use of misogynistic needlessness. I think misogyny/sexism is a realistic part of life and no I'm not against it being in books. But on the other hand, there's a character in this book named Rake and during a scene he says paraphrasing here things akin to “find that cunt” and “get that bitch” - it just SO easily could of been “find her” with literally nothing changing. Same for the scene of the mother stating a daughter should know how to wash her cunt. You could of called her dirty or whatever but narrowing it down to an unwashed “cunt” is laughable. I think horror writers especially men authors, I've found just say things like this for the sake of it, this novel proving my point, and it genuinely adds nothing besides a weird reaffirmation of no reprieve from a man's mind even in fictional circumstances.
Nice premise, but definitely fell flat for me in many aspects. Will probably be my last book from the author.
Contains spoilers
I do have some mild feelings about the way it ended because it did feel very movie scene worthy where you just want to smack the person for being undoubtedly stupid but it wasn't enough to make me lower my star rating and having this be a favorite. It's truly enjoyable. And to the credit of the ending if I had a secret like that I also wouldn't be thinking straight at all, I suppose should that have been potentially outed.
Forever been looking for a book that captured a similar vibe as Princess Floralinda by Tasmyn Muir and ahhh I should have known Silvina Ocampo would pull through!
This was obviously published way prior to PF but I loved and adored this one. Ominous and with Ocampo's writing style, it was a perfect pair.
LOL at that one review for saying she didn't get it because of the vocabulary in the novel. Is google also too hard to understand?
Everything else aside - if you didn't follow because of not having an understanding of the vocabulary, you willingly chose to remain ignorant from laziness.
Some things just irk me, dumb insipid people being one of them.
