Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Nowhere in the descriptions or reviews of this novel did I see any cautionary statements about the extremely disturbing, brutal, graphic nature of the torture, rape, and killing scenes, especially around the 2/3 point of the book, at which time I said “nope” and shut the book down. I’d have appreciated the “heads up” and avoided the waste of the purchase price, the few hours I’d spent reading that far, and the time it will take me to forget those horrendous images. Up to that point, I was already disappointed in this novel, and slogging on just to see how the conflict set up at the beginning is resolved. Novels that I really enjoy, typically play like a movie in my mind as I read, in full color. This one plays like a documentary in black and white. I’ve read some of Lisa See’s earlier books and thought they were kind of fun, but with this one, I feel absolutely no attachment to the characters, perhaps because it feels like the author is trying to cover too much ground and is intent on displaying the facts instead of letting me become immersed in the story. This is not an entertaining novel, I get that. What I have a harder time with is that with all these glorifying reviews, it looks like readers have become so inured to descriptions of such an abominable nature that they just take it in stride, describe these passages as “difficult to read”, and gloss over it. That’s the scary part.