A review by emilyrainsford
John Dies at the End by David Wong

Did not finish book. Stopped at 7%.
I enjoy this author's Tiktok videos and thought the title was funny and clever. I genuinely thought I would like this book. By the end of the prologue, I knew I was wrong. It was one of the stupidest things I've ever read. And I have a very immature sense of humour, but this just felt off in a way that's hard to put my finger on. The moment when the basement door handle turned into a penis which caused them to be locked in a dangerous situation because the protagonist was too much of a damn child to touch a peen was where it started to go downhill. Moments later, the basement was filling with literal shit for apparently no other reason than "hehe poopoo funny". Then a pile of frozen meat turned into an ambulatory creature and I knew this was all just way too stupid for me. And as I say, it's not that I have a high brow sense of humour. I thought Percy Jackson was hilarious and it's literally written for 12 year old boys. This just all felt like it was trying too hard. 

I decided to give it a chance and started on chapter one and was absolutely shocked by a casual and joking use of the N word with hard "r" for no good reason at all?? Then repeated paragraphs about the protagonist obsessing over the "Asian waitress"'s boobs.

I looked up reviews to see if it was going to get better, and learnt that apparently the R word is used later in the book, in reference to a girl the protagonist thought was autistic, and when it turns out she's actually "just" depressed, he decides he's attracted to her.

I am honestly shocked, I thought the author's Tiktoks were intelligent and insightful, and now I can't even watch them anymore, knowing the creator of them wrote this steaming pile of edgelord garbage.

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