Dephress

Exceeded My Wildest Expectations

Revisado: 02-04-21

As someone with a near-pathological fear of zombies and a distrust of popular literature, I was reluctant to read this book, but my friends insisted it was worth my time. What an understatement. This book is truly excellent. Highly recommend.

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Protagonist is a terrible therapist!

Revisado: 01-11-21

Full disclosure, I was unable to finish this story. I simply could not like or respect the main character, and as a result wasn't invested in the story at all.

She is a truly terrible therapist, and the majority of the scenes (at least for the first few hours that I listened to) are of her working with her patients. During that time she barely listens to them, has no boundaries, asks them only the most generic questions and appears to have no insight into them whatsoever. She abuses client confidentiality in order to gossip about how cute a client is - but it's ok, just a harmless accident! A young self-harming client tells her she is suicidal and she doesn't even respond to it.

I truly dislike books like this because this is NOT how therapists should behave, and if someone is seeking therapy and reads this book they may get discouraged. Nevermind the fact that it's just not fun to listen to someone doing their job badly for hours!

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Mediocre at Best, Offensive at Worst

Revisado: 06-07-19

A serial killer story so basic and trite it could almost be satisfying in a made-for-tv-movie way, if not for the formulaic characters and the blatant homophobia.

The narrator does a fantastic job of bringing this traditional-family-values propaganda piece to life. The antagonist, a lifelong abuse victim turned serial killer who spent years getting “homosexually raped” is in stark contrast to the family man protagonist, working hard to put his marriage back together after a one-off affair. I did enjoy this aspect of the story and I was rooting for the couple, despite the wife’s inexplicable neuroticism and frigidity, which are described off-hand as though normal for women.

King spends little time describing the murders the story revolves around, or the experiences of the victims. Instead, he devotes his most lurid prose to the topic of homosexual pedophiles, dirty old men and limpwristed faggots, making it clear how disgusted the characters are by these creatures. Certainly pedophiles deserve our disgust, but King makes it clear that while this story is set in the 90s, the views on “the queers” remain firmly in the 1950s.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Bad to Worse

Revisado: 05-30-19

I tried to like this book, I really did. But it just kept getting worse and worse. In the end I have about 45 minutes left and I just cannot bring myself to finish it.

The main character’s motivations make no sense. Her choices make no sense. It’s like the author got all their knowledge about human behavior from made-for-tv Lifetime specials.

Here’s an example. If your best friend was dating the man who murdered your whole family, had never been caught and was still trying to kill you, would you, A) Tell your best friend? B) Call the police? C) Have a dinner party with them and act like everything’s cool, then tell no one? Guess which option our protagonist chooses.

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esto le resultó útil a 214 personas

Couldn’t Finish It

Revisado: 11-01-18

I know I shouldn’t write a review having not finished the book, but I wanted to share my experience anyway. I listed to about 50% of this story before I just couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe the “twist” will redeem this story, but the journey to get to that point just isn’t worth it.

The protagonist is so unlikable the story is painful to listen to. The reader is supposed to believe that her willingness to marry a man two weeks into dating him despite the plethora of huge red flags is due to her childhood in the foster care system and her mother’s suicide. She’s damaged, the author wants us to think, so that explains her immense stupidity, her head-in-the-sand spinelessness and her self-esteem issues. But there’s a problem with this. She was also a stable, happy, independent person before she met her future husband, but was totally willing to ditch her entire life in order to be a wife and mother, despite near-constant abuse. She revels in believing his abusive rhetoric, agrees with him while he isolates her from her friends and demonizes her to her children. While these are things that people in abusive relationships contend with, the author does not provide any real reasons why our protagonist would so wholeheartedly go along with it. Her husband treats her like shit *constantly*. She gets nothing from the relationship that might cause her to stay. Nothing. We are supposed to believe that she is “deeply in love” with him, but at this point, why would she be? Although many abuse victims do love their abusers, this story lacks the nuance and complexity of a real relationship.

All this is to say that I just couldn’t stand to listen to any more of their toxic behavior. Husband treats wife like she is scum, wife wonders vaguely if husband might be wrong about her sometimes and then decides that her life is “perfect.” I can’t stick around for the “twist” that might make it all better. I just can’t.

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esto le resultó útil a 92 personas

A sugary, sentimental retelling of a brutal historic kidnapping

Revisado: 09-26-18

This fictionalized retelling of the kidnapping of Sally Horner falls short of the mark for me. The writing style is simply too flowery and syrupy for me, as if to contrast with the horrors of some of the content, and it comes across as overly sentimental.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Awful Everything

Revisado: 05-03-18

Rich, successful mother is shocked to learn that lying to your child and refusing to address their emotional needs can have legal consequences.

She provides the best home, the best school, the best toys and activities, but every time her daughter wants to spend actual quality time with her, she recoils. Why is her daughter so loud, so needy, so fiercely independent? Why can't she just sit quietly and do what she's told? Why should a mother need to discipline her child or show her that violent outbursts are unacceptable -- shouldn't she have figured that out on her own by now?

The problem with this story is not the plot, which is interesting enough, or the characters' emotional baggage. The problem is the narrative's insistence that we are just like the protagonist and that everything she thinks is relatable.

The author acts like the reader has never heard of badly behaved children before and would be shocked to know that there are strategies out there to cope. The lesson learned is that we should all try to address our children's needs because, surprise, their could be emotional - and legal - consequences when we don't. Who knew?

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Couldn't Finish It

Revisado: 03-16-18

I know I shouldn't leave a review without actually finishing the book, but I just couldn't make it through more than the first few hours.

The plot is tenuous at best, like a slow-moving train drudging along. I kept waiting for something to happen but it was just another character staring out a window, another wife keeping boring secrets from the husband who adores her despite her utter lack of personality.

The biggest issue I had was that I could not tell the characters apart. They're even narrated by different people, yet every chapter I found myself wondering, "Which one is this? The one who drinks or the other one?"

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esto le resultó útil a 37 personas

Incredible narration of a mediocre story

Revisado: 01-15-18

There are definitely some positive aspects to this book, including the stellar performance by the narrator, but I don't know that it's worth slogging through the hours of obnoxious whining and countless descriptions of the protagonist drinking wine. She's unlikable - in part she is supposed to be unlikable - but that makes for huge chunks of the story where there is no one to root for. I stuck with it til the end - I don't know that I'd recommend you do the same.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Utter Rubbish

Revisado: 08-15-17

I'll start by saying that I didn't finish this book -- normally I don't leave reviews for books I don't finish, but this one was so painful a listen I just had to say something.

The main character, Cass, is the embodiment of all negative female character traits in existence. She might as well be the poster girl for the doctors who used to think the womb "wandered" throughout the body, causing hysteria.

She is stupid, irrational, neurotic, weak, skittish, conniving, concerned only with "appearing" to be a good wife and a good person. The reasons she behaves this way are just excuses, yet the author expects us to like her, feel sorry for her and relate to her.

It is so frustrating to listen to her going through her day. "Telling the truth is hard!" "Telling lies is also hard!" "My husband won't like me if I admit to having flaws." Pout. Whine. Repeat.

The way she behaves regarding the "mystery phone calls" was what did me in. It doesn't occur to her to block the number, or even to check the caller ID when the phone rings --though she says it's a blocked number, she never once checks it again and just keeps answering it and having a complete meltdown over the receiver every time, regardless of who is calling. She refuses to ignore the calls. She refuses to do anything but scream and sob into the receiver who basically 0 provocation.

Again, I didn't finish it. Maybe it's all justified and explained in the end. But I just couldn't force myself to get there, it couldn't possibly be worth it.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas