Reviews tagging 'Fatphobia'

Chlorine by Jade Song

35 reviews

_sappho_wannabe's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

This book was so intense and horrifying in the perfect way. If you liked Our Wives Under the Sea you would like this.
Would be 5 stars if I could see myself rereading but I don’t.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Body shaming, Self harm, Toxic relationship, and Blood

Moderate: Violence, Gore, Medical content, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Grief, Eating disorder, Medical trauma, and Sexual harassment

ajiinaaa's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail and Body horror

Moderate: Eating disorder and Child abuse

Minor: Fatphobia, Emotional abuse, and Sexual content

tifftastic87's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.5

Ren is obsessed with two things in life, mermaids and swimming. When a head injury takes her out of the sport and then a disqualification takes away a team victory, Ren starts feeling the pressure to be perfect. To swim like a mermaid, and she plans a final act to reveal at regionals.

I liked this more in concept than in execution. There were a lot of really tense moments that kept me reading, but the pacing was incredibly slow and that made it difficult for me to finish. I like a slow paced dreamy literary horror, but there was something about this one that didn't quite work for me. I wanted a little more out of it. I did really appreciate the conversation the book was having about the pressure on teenage girls, the expectations on those who are not wealthy and how being a first generation child of immigrants can really mess with that. Ren felt incredibly isolated constantly, and that put her in a lot of really awful situations, I felt for her in those moments. I am still unsure about the ending, but I did like some aspects of it. I think the somewhat metaphorical examination of mental health was done really well, but also here I wanted a little more. I think the ending is where it kind of lost a bit of the punch it was going for. 

Spoiler for the ending:

The fact that Cathy helped Ren essentially commit suicide because she felt guilty for not helping her when she was sexually assaulted was a really odd choice. Using that I don't like how the letters from Cathy took up so much space when it was just Cathy continuing to center herself in Ren's story again. I get what it was going for, with the lack of centering Ren in those letters, but I wish something more had been done with it. It was more again of Cathy centering herself in the ending, by being able to spend that time with Ren when she was emotionally vulnerable rather than actually being helpful to her.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Self harm, Racism, Blood, Eating disorder, Body horror, and Fatphobia

Moderate: Alcohol, Body shaming, Addiction, and Abandonment

joensign's review against another edition

challenging dark tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Body horror, Eating disorder, Injury/Injury detail, Toxic relationship, Pedophilia, Racism, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Medical content, Body shaming, and Fatphobia

angela_iseli's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Body horror, Toxic friendship, and Bullying

Moderate: Racism, Fatphobia, Drug use, Drug abuse, Forced institutionalization, and Eating disorder

jcnfia's review

dark 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

4.5

OH MY GOD. Thank you for your time. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Medical trauma, Sexual content, Blood, and Body horror

Moderate: Physical abuse, Racism, Homophobia, Sexism, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Eating disorder, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, and Mental illness

Minor: Bullying and Classism

henrygravesprince's review against another edition

challenging dark fast-paced

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

2.25

I’m kind of conflicted on what to make of this book. I think the author is very talented, but this book could have used stronger line editing; in particular, I noticed some ineffective repetition (for example, there’s a relatively short sentence at one point containing the phrase “next to me” twice) and moments where descriptions feel a bit overwritten. The raw, visceral quality of description in this book could be heightened and made more significant if they were trimmed up to be less dense and more specific. Stylistic consistency in the way translation is handled in-text would also be beneficial. A lot of the issues in the writing itself are common and somewhat forgivable in debuts, and the technical errors makes me think the author wasn’t given adequate resources for feedback and editing before publishing.

Giving us more of a basis to why

Cathy is so deeply in love with Ren

would make their relationship dynamic feel a lot more powerful:

we see that she’s in love with Ren, and we know why Ren keeps her around, but we aren’t really shown how Cathy gets to that point

. I can definitely relate to the candid portrayal of being a walking, talking cry for help and no one noticing, which is something I think is emphasized about

Ren in hindsight throughout Cathy’s letters

. I think it would have been more effective if there was more of a portrayal of escalation

for Ren leading up to the big “transformation”, more things showing her willingness to sacrifice her own well-being for success/freedom building up, getting more concerning, and going unnoticed over time

. 

While this book didn’t totally hit for me, I’m interested in seeing what Jade Song writes next. A lot of the themes at play are things I’m interested in reading about, and the writing shows promise—I just was not the target audience for certain aspects of this book, particularly the coming of age/high school aspect. There were definitely elements in this book that did speak to my own teenage experience, I.E. distrust for doctors and the extremely painful periods, and while I was far from a high school athlete, I’ve seen the effects of the high-pressure environment meeting mental health struggles and physical overexertion in people I know who were. Ultimately, this was definitely the right choice of audiobook to listen to while I was left up all night having insomnia from contraction-level cramps. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Medical trauma, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Eating disorder, Racism, Gore, Fatphobia, Toxic friendship, and Sexual content

Minor: Misogyny, Body shaming, Medical content, Xenophobia, and Ableism

lexiesophocli's review

challenging dark medium-paced

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

2.5

felt a lot like ‘our wives under the sea’ in that the mystical element was very confusing, despite the rest of the story being an interesting read. I was waiting for a deeper dive (pardon the pun) into the characters and their motivations but it never came - all in all, this book felt a bit shallow (wow two for two on the wordplay) and lazy for what could’ve been an incredible read! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Medical content, Body horror, Blood, Self harm, and Adult/minor relationship

Moderate: Fatphobia, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Body shaming, Sexual content, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Pregnancy, Alcohol, Eating disorder, Addiction, Drug use, Abortion, and Car accident

rhiannonmohar's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Self harm, Blood, and Body horror

Minor: Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Pedophilia, Body shaming, and Bullying

_allyrose_'s review against another edition

mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

a black-swanesque type of story of a young asian woman and her love (and obsession) of swimming and the lengths she would go to come out on top

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Sexual content, Emotional abuse, Car accident, Fatphobia, Gore, and Injury/Injury detail