Book Review – Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

I’m gonna go ahead and DNF this and feel like I need to give it 1 star as a result. It is a TOUGH read. The summary describes a series of “terrible events” and that is a HARD undersell. This was absolutely brutal. I found myself saying “What the fuck!” out loud about every five minutes.

Trigger warnings for literally just about everything. Maybe I wasn’t in the right headspace going in but this is RELENTLESSLY depressing. I’m okay with depressing sometimes but what’s the point of it here? I get that the author is saying kids lives suck and don’t belong to them but probably could have done that with a lighter hand? It made me physically sick at times and that rarely happens to me from reading even very graphic material.

I feel like I’m usually okay with this kind of stuff but it’s so over the top that it’s making me feel bad and I don’t like reading books to feel bad. Dive on in if you’re into that kind of thing I guess, but seriously beware. There are graphic depictions of domestic abuse, sexual assault involving minors, sexual relationships between preteens, and that was just in the first half I managed to stomach.