Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman

5 reviews

lavender_lake's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense

2.0

a lot of filler, a violent cop main character & an unsatisfactory ending. only plus for me were the historical details, which seemed well-researched 
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ktsdz's review against another edition

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2.0

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morepeachyogurt's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

2.5

what. just because you can add plot twists doesn’t mean you should 🙏. the ending didn’t make much sense at all and cheapened the plot. the author spent both too much and too little time on the sex exploitation subplot; depriving it of its potential meaning whilst engaging in its own form of exploitation for shock value. graphic rape scenes rarely add to the plot and they certainly didn’t here. 
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umbellule's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
I usually don't bother to leave negative reviews, but I wish I had known this going in:
  • The opening is very compelling, and there are a couple of interesting characters, so when the plot starts going downhill you give it the benefit of the doubt. But it does not get any better. 
  • There are several uncomfortably long & graphic depictions of child sexual assault. 
  • The author seems to have a lot of anger towards sex workers. 
The setup had promise, but it needed a harsher edit, and would've been better if the cop character was completely absent.
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honeyreads1066's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

First off what I was expecting was a generic spy thriller but it was a lot more than that.

This book follows Sara, a police officer who was a friend of uncle Stellan's (a retired very famous TV personality) family as a kid and now after he is murdered, she goes on a long journey to figure out who did it.

Agneta is Stellan's wife who after getting a phone call where the other person just says the word Geiger, immediately kills her husband and flees. 

I felt like this book was a mesh of two completely different stories. There was of course the spy angle, but there was also an emphasis on the atrocities committed against women, particularly sex workers. While I thought this would be done well, it felt messy and I didn't see why some aspects were put in there.

The spy angle was okay but I felt it was predictable at times up until you got to the end reveal. There were quite a few elements that were predictable outside of the spy angle but not necessarily in a bad way. 

With the characters, I felt that some of them were fleshed out well but others seemed unnecessary and it meant that it was difficult to keep a hold of who was important. Also, I felt like I didn't like the characters I was supposed to. I had a major dislike for Sara but I'm not sure that I was supposed to. I just found her overly preachy and frankly annoying. 

I also suppose that when there are books from multiple perspectives there's always a chance that one side is going to be more interesting than another and I did find that here.

Overall, maybe this book was not for me. I don't read a lot of spy thrillers but this seemed lacklustre in my opinion.
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