Horror Aficionados discussion

The second selection for October's Group Read is Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin.

Remember to use spoiler tags so you don't give away key plot points.

Happy Halloween.

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This was...the craziest book I think I've read...and I've read some weird stuff.

I wasn’t scared, just exhausted. I’ve already written my full review — and yes, I’d recommend it, but cautiously. This one is for readers wrestling with or breaking free from religious guilt, and those fascinated by how faith mutates into shame.

This story had some interesting historical touchstones, and I liked the technical talk about film restoration. The story also worked perfectly for the Cursed Object BINGO square OR the Nightmare Sequence and Body Horror too. (view spoiler)[ Heavy themes of self-repression, shame, family secrets and religious indoctrination and some fairly gratuitous sexual imagery and body horror scenes. I felt bad for Ellen, and for her father--so much repression and drowning in shame. Her relationship with Jesse was super gross--the rape warning quote was there but it was Ellen continuing to invite him in that was so disturbing. How she both admired and was disgusted and drawn to a Rubenesque women was pretty jacked up too, though I get it was all the fsult of her image-obsessed and generally domineering mother. It was a bit of a struggle to read about an adult single with so many problems seemingly.blamed on other people, though the concept of intergenerational trauma was described. Therapy and taking ownership and adult responsibility for herself would've been a final girl move but instead it kinda just spiraled into bloodlust and crashing out, flinging her shit on everyone else. It was a pageturner and made me think about whether it was highlighting negative stereotypes of Jewish artists or justifying their culture and choices to be inflammatory to act out in rebellion to unrelenting oppression. (hide spoiler)] This was a long 197 pages of oppression by religion, by racism and by patriarchy. I'm tired.

100 pages is enough for me. Didn't like this one at all and I'm not willing to give it enough of my time to finish it. The writing style is extremely annoying, the plot jumps from reality into nonsense dream sequences constantly. Irritating beyond belief.