zsabella's reviews
127 reviews

I fell somewhere in the middle on this horror classic. I knew going in it wouldn’t have a fast-paced plot about the strange happenings in Hill house, but it was so repetitive and took too long to reach the climax.

Shirley Jackson is a great writer, but the character relationships in this really brought it down for me. Other than Theodora, the rest of the characters felt too distant for me to care. I get why Eleanor feels flat because she’s trying to find any way to be likable and interesting, but I didn’t personally enjoy reading SO much about this dynamic with the other characters.

I don’t regret reading it, but I think I like Jackson’s dreamy, surreal type of dialogue and plotting better in her short stories because ~200 pages was stretching the limits of my attention. The off-balance, unsettling atmosphere was there, but I wanted more perspective from Hill House itself to get an equal blend of real spookiness and character study.

Content Warnings

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

this happens to be a rare case where I slightly prefer the movie over the book, and it’s because the latter definitely aged worse over time. the amount of fatphobic language and cultural references of its time never really let up, it was almost distracting 🥴

however, everything else about this hits the perfect mix of serial killer chills and thrills. I love how much hannibal indulges writing letters to his friends, and never in my life have I read a more TERRIFYING chapter in a book than the chapter describing a basement.

Content Warnings

Saint Sebastian's Abyss by Mark Haber

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challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

The King in Yellow, Deluxe Edition by Robert W. Chambers

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

the pushkin edition of the 4 interconnected stories reads more like weird (not scary) vignettes about people who read ‘the king in yellow’ play and lost their minds in different ways. this isn’t poorly written, but a little boring for psychological horror and skippable even if you were interested in the inspiration behind true detective like I was.

Content Warnings

Asunder by Kerstin Hall

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

if this is the start of a series, I don’t feel compelled to continue and will have forgotten most of the plot/lore by the time a sequel comes. I didn’t know going into this that kerstin hall didn’t believe in ANY kind of hand-holding with her style of world building—there’s no glossary of terms or even a map, when it’s so obvious that this complex world needed at least one of those things to help orient readers. I struggled pretty much the entire time trying to figure out if “herald”, “favoured”, “apostate”, “vassal”, “adherent”, all terms used over and over again meant “worshipper” or completely different concepts. the only explanations of the magic system aren’t made any plainer because the only character who can explain it is too much of a brainiac type to even dumb it down for the rest of the characters.

throwing a new reader into a world like this without an appendix is like sending someone off on a solo rafting trip without a life jacket, and this decision seriously gutted my enjoyment. all that focus and energy spent wanting to understand the magic and lore, only for its ending to bottom out and focus on a romantic direction I wasn’t interested in seeing to begin with. I simply didn’t buy into karys and ferain turning their forced situationship into anything more than a friendship forged in eldritch-level trauma 🥴

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zsabella's reviews 127 reviews

zsabella's reviews
127 reviews