Review: PORN


PORN
PORN by Matt Shaw

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I've processed for two days, and only accomplished a middle of the star chart rating.

First off, do Not read this book if you are easily offended by anything in the blurb. They're not kidding. I'm not squeamish at all but this book often had me wanting to scrub out my eyes. But ultimately it is impossible to unsee it. Or even if I could, my brain would remember.

Shaw is a powerful writer. He has a knack for grabbing your attention and holding the reader with tension. He's definitely creative and imaginative. Maybe a bit psychotic lol.

That said, I had to drop my rating for a couple of reasons.

((review continued after tending to grandbaby :))

One, there were several technical issues. Not a lot overall, but enough to distract. Several times I noticed a word used incorrectly in a sentence, and sometimes the tense of the narrative changed from present to past and back again. One time it even did it in mid-sentence. It wasn't often enough that I marked specific examples, but it was distracting enough when reading that I had to re-read the sentence to understand what was meant.

The other thing was the ending. *****SPOILER WARNING****** I felt cheated. Not so much for the way it wrapped up in the epilogue (though that was rather unsatisfying), but the way the last couple of chapters negated the majority of the book. I was like, "huh, wtf??" It was all a dream?? The present storyline at least was nullified by this "reveal". Ugh. *****END OF SPOILER WARNING******

It was a gross-out. It was incredibly freaking disturbing, nearly to the point of being offensive. I'll give it a pass for that though, as I was warned by the book's blurb, cover, and description.

So yeah. It was well-written but damn, what a mindfuck. I actually give Shaw props for that. Keep in mind that I'm a big fan of Quentin Tarantino and Stephen King. And that I never get scared or overly disturbed by their stuff. This, however...yeah.

I probably won't read more stuff in this sub-genre. It's just not for me.



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