Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Tender Beasts

Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

Tender Beasts by Liselle Sambury

5 reviews

wheeliebridge's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Damn. This was such a trip of a book! Every time I thought I could predict what was coming, something came out of left field. I really appreciated the growth of Sunny and her siblings, as well as the nuanced look into toxic family relationships and dynamics.

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sp00ky_girl28's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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danaslitlist's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

*Coming back to edit my review and lowering the rating from 4.5 to 3 after sitting on my feelings.

Tender Beasts is a multilayered thriller that delves into the deep twisted emotions of familial relationships that are burdened with generational trauma and the lengths one would go in order to preserve what they feel matters the most; legacy and survival, or family and future? Or I should say that’s what it attempts and wants to be. Instead by the end we get a book that really shows itself to be trying to say a lot of things at once and results in an archetypical and trope filled novel.

I rounded up my rating because while this book is nowhere near as good as Delicious Monsters, and even feel like a weird paradox to it, I still had fun with it. This book got me out of a reading slump and I think that’s because it’s a compulsive enough story that I had a good time even though the material itself isn’t fantastic. And that kills me because of how much I wanted to LOVE it. I’m someone who yells “READ ‘DELICIOUS MONSTERS’” over and over to anyone who will listen.

Everything about this book felt like leaning into the most predicable set of tropes and that extends to the entire cast of characters. Was our protagonist, Sunny, the best vessel to narrate the experiences on page? I don’t know. I actually really think this book would’ve worked if we were with Dom, an unreliable narrator. Everyone else felt entirely too flat and one dimension, tropes instead of people.

I felt that the mystery and the supernatural element was one of the highlights of the novel. The stakes felt high the entire time and throughout the story I truly was worried about the safety and the wellbeing of the characters. Sambury knows the perfect balance between utilizing gore and violence to enhance her work without it becoming overly excessive to the point of exaggeration. There were genuinely moments where the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up on end and I had my hand over my mouth in shock.

But this suspense doesn’t culminate into anything but a rushed and unsatisfying ending.

The use of the mother’s journal entries to bring us back to her childhood for the flashbacks was also a treat and a very smart way of providing information on the Milk Man without spoiling (pun intended) too much in the present time line.

I’m still unsure of how I feel about the ending. I keep fluctuating between loving it because I understand the metaphorical nature of the themes and also wanting a bit more of a pay off.

I’m leaning more towards the latter, wishing that certain moments hadn’t ended so quickly and we had more time to ruminate. There were also a few plot points that felt ….too convenient, but overall being content with the book.

List of Content Warnings: Death of a parent/grief, animal death (on page - cow and lizards; off page, referenced but not described - cat; off page, referenced and somewhat described - unspecified animals), mentions of self-harm/suicide, drinking and drug use, infidelity, discussions of toxic intimate relationships, detailed body horror/gore, violence, death (includes child death)

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nickel_books's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

My first reaction upon finishing this book was WOW. Tender Beasts is masterful. Weaving complex and emotional themes throughout, Sambury creates a waking nightmare filled with violence, secrets, and plenty of mystery. Think Slenderman, think Get Out, and then put it in a blender with Dear White People and that's almost close to the journey of emotions and plot twists you're witness to in Tender Beasts. Do yourself a favor, read it!

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bookishmillennial's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial

Had Shirley come to warn me about her family or mine?

Thank you to Simon & Schuester & Netgalley for the ARC - I provided this honest review of my own accord. Wow wow wow wow WOW I was truly creeped the fuck out by this and was not expecting anything that I read. *still processing*

The book opens with matriarch Ainsley Behre de-planing and walking to the airport garage, before she meets her untimely death after a tragic slip on the icy walkways. Then, we are introduced to the first-person POV of second-to-youngest child, Sunny Behre, and we meet her younger brother Dom, the "middles" Kiley and Darren, and the eldest child Karter. Their father Jay and Karter take up leading the family after Ainsley's death, as the family quietly tries to deal with Dom's charge of second-degree murder of his late girlfriend Torri (she died exactly one year before Ainsley passed away). The family is quite well off, and they run an high school/full-scholarship academy specifically for underprivileged kids, to give them the education and advantages that they normally would not in the public school system. Since Ainsley's death, she left behind something for each of her kids, and she leaves a note for Sunny, stating: "Take care of Dom," which is just as helpful as it is elusive. When more and more murders happen at the school, Sunny and Dom team up to find out who is doing this and trying to frame him for it.

I spent the entire book at the very edge of my seat because I could not decide what the outcome and final explanations would be. I refused to believe there was any validity to the Milk Man boogeyman horror stories, and almost with equal fervor, I refused to believe in a world where any of the Behres were capable of such malicious, horrifying behavior. LS deserves her flowers for the intricate and calculated way she developed these characters, their dynamics, and the societal context that they existed in. It broke my heart to see Sunny reckon with the way that she, her siblings, and her parents treated Dom and the way no one ever questioned or challenged it. They simply allowed him to feel excluded from his own family, and pushed him into the arms of those who likely weren't the best for him. Sunny grapples with being the person she thought her mom wanted her to be versus the kind of person she feels proud to be, and that's a central theme that runs through this story.

AND it's not just Sunny who Ainsley and Jay Behre did a disservice; it is all of their kids. Regardless of the Milk Man cult being real or not, they passed that trauma and those expectations onto their kids, rather than try to confront this together as a family. They encouraged their children to internalize messaging about the way things "had to be" versus trying to envision a different life for all of them, one where they didn't have to hide or sacrifice one for the good of them all. They were fully resigned to a fate they thought they could not escape, which I found could be a mirror to the systematic racism and classism that surrounded them. In this light, I can't wholly blame them; they tried to make it work within a system that was already rigged against them. However, I was so moved by Sunny's choices in the end, choosing hope and envisioning a different way, rather than simply accepting her fate.

Honorable mention to Mercy and Shyanne, whose authenticity and upfront demeanors were utter perfection. I loved the scene with Sunny towards the end where they have an open dialogue about how Sunny's privilege, facade, and position within the school played such a massive role in how others perceived her. I love a little tough love, and I appreciate a call in. Craig, from the very beginning, is a predictably dusty crusty dude, and you know how it's kind of horrible but you still kind of root for someone to die in a slasher like this? That's this dude (at least for me lollll). Last honorable mention to Jeremy, Dom's bestie and an overall cutie whose vibes I approved of from the very start!

see content warnings below - this was wildly fucked up so take care while reading

Quotations that stood out to me:

"You know that if you suffer just so other people are happy, that's not okay, right?"
I didn't know how to tell my brother that was my strength. That was what Mom had admired about me. Because part of me thought that maybe it wasn't okay either. But also, I wasn't sure how to say that I didn't know how to stop.

Maybe Marsha Allen had a point. Maybe our family was more beast than bear. Not majestic predators but something else. Something twisted and toxic and snarling. I'd spent so much time pretending to be otherwise when I should have just embraced the monster I was meant to be.

There was something very wrong with this family. And it wasn't the "Milk Man," but it was something.

Mom shouldn't have made anyone leader. Normal families didn't have leaders. The pressure of our success and survival should have never put on one person.

Our parents were not the same parents to all of us. I got the best of them. But Karter ... Karter had gotten a very different version. And she'd thought we hated her, and still, she was doing something she believed would help us all. My sister loved us so much. And she didn't know how to tell us, so she'd done this instead.

Mom had us in the academy trying to act like we were the same as those kids when we weren't. I knew now, more than ever, that pretending nothing was wrong wasn't how you protected people. My friends hadn't wanted me to act like I was like them. They'd just wanted me to take a minute to understand how their lives might be different and actually listen when they told me.

Because how could we call ourselves a family if we could only be that by leaving someone behind? Maybe that was how Mom and Dad needed to survive. But it didn't need to be how we did it. We weren't beasts anymore.

The Milk Man might be a monster, but we were Behres. And he would come to learn that we had claws too.

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