Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - Acts of Desperation

I might need to sit with this one for a while before writing a full review. The writing was raw and compelling, but the story did start to lose my interest around the halfway point. It became monotonous, the characters not really doing much or changing — granted that may have been the point.

I often saw a younger version of myself in the FMC, which was validating and disturbing simultaneously. If I hadn’t borrowed this from the library I would have been annotating it furiously, and I might buy a copy to do just that. It made me think a lot, and feel a lot, which is what I want from a book.

Definitely check the content warnings.

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lizetteratura's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

a bit of a difficult book to swallow about longing, obsession, lust, desire, pain love, desperation and most heavily focused on toxic relationships

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bloupibloupreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional slow-paced

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

3.5

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wine_and_dine's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

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

4.0

Honestly how can a person be so willing to make herself so small to make a man happy s
Some parts were very challenging to read through (page 262).

Cieran is horrid for his ability to make her feel worthless simply by ignoring her, and he blatantly thought he was better than everyone else 'because he's an artist'.

It was written remarkably well and her though development for justifying abuse was so clear.

The manic thoughts made her such an unreliable narrator I constantly questioned if the severity of the abuse was magnified by her incessant need to be loved (and magnified by the panic of not being loved after an argument).

The ending was very abrupt and her character arc felt very incomplete and nothing was learned from the story; it felt like I was reading her diaries and the retrospective Athens chapters didn’t show growth from the abuse and from her own (obvious) personality disorder.

VERY strong themes of: longing, obsession, lust, desire, pain, self-harm, love, friendship, admiration, desperation

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woodiefrog's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

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

2.75

Sad-girl core like Sally Rooney’s books, but with even less to say about what’s behind the desperation whole generation(s; always there are some, but particularly in the west after 2nd wave of feminist movement) of white women gravitate towards.

Is it “raw and honest”? We who did not live the lives nor knew what went behind the keyboard tapping or even diary keeping, who are we to judge? Personally I am perpetually fascinated by my drive to understand the seeking of degradation and erotified romance/sexually suffering, the history both personal and social that caused it. At once I am also slightly unmoored by the seemingly rise of popularity (or perhaps, undiminished? There’s Girl, Interrupted long ago after all) of this type of fiction, straddling along the literary and genre in terms of audience, with main characters in their early 20s always white and women and in desperate need of therapy but instead the fiction leads us to see them “transform” through romance, upswing or down to hell.

I think someone on Goodreads mentioned pejoratively Fleabag in starting this “trend.” While I understand the sentiment, I think Fleabag is an examination of this genre, this “aesthetic.” Fleabag does no more seek her suffering than hoping against memories and her past (which is still very much alive in her necessities to be around her family). A lot of central conflicts within the characters arises and revolves around Fleabag’s relationship with women, rather than with men. But as this book demonstrates, “at a glance” is all it matters to a great deal of audience at times. Not all experience warrants any meaningful explanation or links to the larger experience beyond one’s own victimhood.

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gabriellegoldenhour's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

2.75

I recently found out that a new favorite genre of mine is “delulu females”, I thought this would be another but really it just gave me haunting reflections of my past. Not everything was the same, obviously, but feelings and scenarios of my youth in similar situations mirrored this unnamed narrator. I feel like when I started really liking the book it fell off and just stayed flat for me.

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cecereads__'s review against another edition

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4.25

Intense is the first word that comes to mind to describe this book. It’s hauntingly confronting and matter-of-fact almost in its portrayal of a toxic relationship. How obsessive, toxic, desperate and altering an experience the main character goes through.
I think it’s very well done how we get insights on her past and way of reasoning with herself. Especially, there’s a scene near the end of the book that I will be haunted by for a while.
- I found it difficult to rate this tbh, but my rating is based on the story-telling and brutal honesty of it rather than the connection to the characters (not that they have to be likeable), if that makes sense

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ninahuynh's review against another edition

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Desperately tried to find the will to continue on; no longer spark any joy from this book.

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