maketeaa's reviews
242 reviews

a pretty accessible, albeit at times oversimplified and somewhat logic-leaping, exploration of human behaviour structured around the seven deadly sins, aka literally why we do things that we shouldn't, but also are they that bad in the first place?

while i found the overall theme and construction of the book interesting, i think a lot of it failed to investigate the science and psychology beyond surface level. it felt more like a recount of existing analysis in a report organised for people to read in a more self-help kind of way, which, still, lacked a lot of meat in terms of actually providing advice. a lot of the cases used are already pretty well known (e.g. the sexual deviant who had a brain tumour and was fine as soon as it was operated out, etc) so i personally didn't feel like there was much new being brought to the table.

i dont think this was a bad book necessarily? it laid out the information that it said it would so i suppose it succeeded in that aspect. there were definitely some dubious arguments put forward regarding food and eating which i think was just a bit irresponsible of the author to have put without further nuance regarding eating disorders. i think what bothers me about purported self help psychology books sometimes is that they draw unhelpful conclusions on how you should be living your life based on evidence that could lead to a multitude of different routes based on the lifestyles people lead. but i dont think the advice in this book was outrageous in its chain of reasoning as much as it was just lazy and surface level. it seems like mr jack lewis wanted to cash his cheque and move on lol

what made me think 'you know, i wanna read another book by eric larocca' was the itch to read something disturbing, something that creeps you out the same way 'things have gotten worse since we last spoke' does. but ngl this one was a bit of a flop. i feel like there was potential but it was honestly like reading a brainstorm of ideas rather than an actual book. but maybe that was the point??

writing style already put me off a bit. there were multiple times i had to cringe because it felt so contrived in a way? with what the theme turns out to be, about the nature of plagiarism and putting up smoke and mirrors using others' ideas to hide your true self, maybe the way all the important details were so on the nose while random things were left mysterious just for suspense were purposeful. but personally i think you can make a theme clear through a story without making it literally pulling teeth to read.

i think bc of that it made it pretty hard to really feel the impact of what could've been very intense scenes. i just didnt care about what was going on because i felt like the story was asking for reactions from me that were not deserved. like, for example, the first scene with tamsen trying to run away from presley had me HOOKED. and either it was organised in a way that was too confusing to pick up on, but as there continued to be moments where tamsen had a weird reaction about presley without any release of the tension, it just started to feel old. the entire middle of the book kind of feels like a muddle of weird happenings that *should* have been unsettling but just didnt really hit because youre too busy wondering if the other things left untied would make sense soon. the alternations between the work written by martyr and martyr's recordings of himself does not help that.

speaking of martyr, omg i rolled my eyes so hard. reading his thoughts felt like scrolling through a 2014 grunge blog on tumblr where op REALLY wants you to know how edgy and dark they are. the dialogue between tamsen and co were the same. painful to get through. 

i wouldnt say the ending was redeeming but it certainly didnt leave me feel like i wasted my time completely. i think the premise of a murderer that kills their victims because theyve plagiarised from them and reading what would've been the compilation of the voices of all their victims couldve been very interesting and original, especially with the questions it'd raise about the reliability of our current narrator and, really, any narrator. but the execution of this really fell flat. while it's entirely possible to say that how confusing and poorly written this book was could've been some kind of poetic statement that i just didnt underestand, i personally feel like if the metaphor youre using impacts the quality of your story as a whole, then maybe choose a different metaphor.

existentialism but it's beautiful. like a long form poem that looks at the lives of each astronaut on board the aircraft. especially at the beginning i felt like this couldve been allegorical to depression -- watching the world go by in a great metal life support cannister, training your legs and your body for when gravity hits you again, thinking about all the things that you've missed in your time in orbit and how it'll hit you once you're back on ground level. but as it went along harvey explores more and more about the universe, about the world, about god, about humanity. one of my favourite lines has to be 'what made that but some heedless hurling beautiful force?... what made that but some heedful hurling beautiful force?'

this book really takes you and puts you into orbit, too. so beautiful

suchhhh a fun read. literally sometimes u just read a book and it's like you know what. im having a blast. this was that kind of book. the unfolding of the premise did NOT disappoint -- there were so many times i was like 'greta, omg,' and honestly that's FUN!!! LET WOMEN BE MESSY!! and let there be no EXPIRATION DATE for this allowance! i think there's so frequently this idea that by the time youre 25 or 30 as a woman you have to have everything figured out and you have to have done all your therapy and read all your self help books so you can transition from manic pixie dream girl to a 'mother'. and i love that this subverted that idea. i love that greta described herself as 'asleep' for those years of growth, that it's when she has this trainwreck of a relationship with big swiss is when she starts taking her own steps to confront herself.

my feelings for big swiss are complicated. towards the end i didnt like her. but i did love the line about greta needing to learn how to fight for her life. 

but, in conclusion, my main takeaway is THIS BOOK WAS FUN

after boy parts, im being so honest, i went into this with kind of low hopes. i have the impression of eliza clark, sometimes, that she writes based on vibes. like. love that for her but without a solid structure it can be a bit like reading a sentence that has no clear end in the form of a novel. and while at the beginning it felt like that was what was happening, the last chapter completely shot my review up to five stars. clark shows an in depth, immersive amount of knowledge of fandom culture and the phenomenon of true crime obsession, and brings into question the ethics of consuming the content and, more importantly, creating it. i think the reason i loved the last chapter so much was because it reflected so many discussions you see happening within true crime podcast/youtuber/book communities. how authentic are those retellings, especially those that take on a narrative voice? can you ever consume true crime content ethically, without exploiting the pain of the victim's families? a very interesting and well informed conversation! like an essay but in narrative form

the prose for the vampire girlie had that annoying contrived historical fiction feeling, like the author REALLY wants you to know it's the 18th century

very disconnected character arc

i only liked the brief softness between alma and the vampire, fluffing her hair, wiping her face, etc. there's something so tender about a monster being treated with love

but the synopsis makes it seem like the intersection of the women's lives would've been a bigger part of the book. this intersection doesn't happen until right at the 80% mark. the rest of the book is a draggggggg