Reviews with content warning for Adult/minor relationship - Any Man

Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

spookymartinireads's review

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challenging dark sad tense fast-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

check tw forreal

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ebbys_library's review

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dark emotional inspiring reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated

5.0

There are a lot of content warnings, so take care of yourself. But this was such an important book to read. Male SA is so stigmatized and not really discussed, and SA is a problem that affects us all. We all need to be kind to one another about the topic, regardless of gender, sexuality, and circumstances surrounding the event.

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aformeracceleratedreader's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad fast-paced

4.25

READ TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNINGS
this was a great read (not necessarily because of the story since it discusses r*p* and s*x*u*l a*s*u*t, but the way it was told). It's multiple pov and can get pretty graphic. I wish we got a little bit of expansion on Michael and Sebastian as they were the victims we got the least amount of time with. I also didn't love the ending, but it was wrapped up nicely enough for me with how the victims coped and tried to heal.

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pranphetamine's review

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

Uncomfortable read, but eye-opening. There is a lot of sensitive material in this book, so definitely be in the right mental headspace before reading this. The marriage of social commentary and mixed media viewpoints is done really well. What stuck out the most to me was the writing style. It’s so beautifully written. Also, the audiobook paired with reading the physical book is an even more immersive experience (highly recommend doing it this way). Looking forward to explore more of Amber Tamblyn’s work. (Fun fact: Amber Tamblyn is an actress! She’s been in The Ring, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and other pretty big named stuff. It’s always cool to see creatives shine in different mediums.)

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wickedgrumpy's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious 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

2.5

Well, I was looking for a change of pace and I think I got it. The topic itself is hard to read about, hard to talk about, etc.

The writing was quite well done, kind of a bit of mixed media with the journal entries, chat logs, transcripts, poetry, and radio show vibes. The first three victims were well fleshed out and their trauma was ever present and horrifying. The later ones felt more superficial though I'm not really sure why. There were also quite a few questions that were raised in the plot that were never answered that made it feel a bit rushed.

I do think this is a good book that has a lot of value in representing sexual assault as a whole and especially in male victims. However, with all that in mind, I don't feel like I was the intended audience because I don't generally like to read books about rape. I suppose I didn't expect it to be quite so graphic about it.

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wyabook234's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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indigo149's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

chloseencounter's review

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Any Man was a stunning and unique experience. I’d 100% recommend the audio book because it’s extremely immersive.

I really enjoyed hearing all the different POVs of the antagonist’s victims, this was a very raw look into all the various outcomes that can come from surviving sexual assault, weather it’s dealing by humor, family, control, emptiness, self destructive behavior, or even suicide. While the characters were interesting and their storylines were heartbreaking, the most special thing to me about this novel is the look at what women so often deal with when faced with sexual violence but through the eyes of a man. Unfortunately female victims of sexual assault are all too common, we hear about it so much in fact, our society has become desensitized to the sexual abuse women face and how it’s handled by the public. Flipping the narrative and using men as the victims not only opens up an important conversation about men who have experienced sexual violence and how they are treated but also made the subject feel much more shocking. Then I suppose we can ask ourselves…why is that? Why is being sexually assaulted as a women so commonplace that it doesn’t feel nearly as gut wrenching to read?

The most eye opening part in my opinion was the very last bit, when our serial rapist responds to the journalist, in which she replies with a lot of grotesque language about how a women might think about men as essentially prey or even nonhuman. Then she sends the same exact paragraph replacing the pronouns with she/her, it was sort of appalling to see how different those paragraphs felt right next to one another. Why one was shocking and the other…felt sort of normal. As a women it was easy for me to read the paragraph and think “yea that’s just how men often think of us”, and yet the same exact paragraph but with men as the group being preyed upon felt much more abhorrent.

At the end of the day, I think that ultimately there wasn’t one predator but multiple women predators. The story seemed to lump these people into one frightening amalgamation of a women because how could society believe that there may be multiple women out there preying upon men, it must be a repeat offender. However, when a women is attacked it could literally be “any man”, which is a very smart way to make a statement about how both male and female victims of sexual violence are seen unfairly by the general public.

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