The description of the book intrigued me, as did the cover so I was looking forward to reading this novel. However, the description was the only part of this book that felt organized. There was a lot happening, the writing style was hard to follow and none of the characters were appealing.

If I’m leaving a review and rating for a book, I make sure I finish the book so that it’s fair. This was a struggle. I wasn’t a fan of the writing style and felt the story dragged on. The triggers were fairly tame, maybe because they weren’t written well so they had minimal impact.

This wasn’t a winner for me but I’m sure there are those who will enjoy it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Emergence, Inc. for the opportunity to read this book. All opinions are my own.

I really tried getting into Bodies. The premise is really cool and it's what caught my attention. The start of the book is really good and fast-paced, but it is very graphic. That is what kind of turned me off. I usually have a strong stomach and not a lot bothers me but this did. After that, the story slows way down and I wound up losing interest in the story.

I did not finish this one. I thought that it would be a book that I was really interested in from the title, but there was just something about this book that I couldn't get into.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it was the perfect blend of horror and scifi. It was such a wonderful plot in the book and I really though it was perfect.

A dark read which unfortunately I could not finish. Might not be everyone’s cup of tea so check the brief first as far more violent than I expected.

I didn't finish this.

The writing was good, but the plot was outrageous. Way too r*pey and abusive.

dnf at 10 %.

I don't know why i didn't read the warning text, but this was simply too much for me. it was waaaay to gross and detailed, and after reading one of the reviews in order to even know what to say, I know i am not alone in feeling like this book is awful.

i was extremely intrigued seeing the cover and the description, however, around 40% in (in all honesty, i struggled with making it that far) i just wanted to give up! the writing was just average, but what bothered me the most was the way in which the story was delivered; with elements of sexism, misogyny, and graphic sex/rape scenes i was disturbed.

now i am not a sensitive reader, but god this book was too much! i hated the main character, he was so disgusting and though i did not DNF i came very close to it.

thank you to NetGalley, the publishers and author for a chance to read and review this title.

When I saw this one available it intrigued me. The cover was good; the contempt seemed right up my street and it felt like it was going to be something good. Unfortunately I DNF’d this at 19%.

I am not a sensitive reader. I enjoy gory stuff, and graphic stuff doesn’t really phase me, but this book just felt like torture porn and it wasn’t good. I enjoyed the premise, the clones, the science. It has such good foundations, but unfortunately for me the writing wasn’t up my street and the writer just wasn’t pulling it off.

I found myself hating my read of it, despite the interesting premise. I hated the main character, I hated the fixation on breasts and bodies. I hated how sexist and perverted it was. I felt like it was trying to get the same shock factor as American Psycho, but without the refinement.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers and author for a chance to read and review this title. I am sorry I didn’t enjoy it, but I will always be honest in my reviews.

There might be an audience out there for this, but it isn’t me.

I was looking forward to reading this ARC simply based on what NetGalley's description was and the cover art was alluring. Of course, being that I received this for an honest review, so here is goes: I only got through 33% of the book before I just had to stop. I don't know if I'll pick it back up again, but I feel like I might have to DNF it and forget about giving it another try.

As much as I wanted to like this book, I just couldn't get passed some of the obvious triggers that will most definitely deter readers away. If you are triggered by violence and violence towards women, this will not be a good read for you.

I am going to talk more about the plot that I read, so if you are reading this and you know that you're triggered by the items I mentioned above, I would stop reading. I have other posts that are lighthearted, if you like to make your way to them...

Now I knew there would be some graphic things in this novel, but I didn't know the severity of the graphic scenes. This boy, Vince kills the girl he's been obsessed with, Melissa, to clone her and make a better version of her. Each clone he uses as a personal (and I hate to use this terminology) sex slave. He degrades them and r*apes them. Once he's uninterested in that particular clone, he gets rid of them. This is so he can "perfect" the gene sequencing of his obsession of Melissa. He becomes a big wig in the underground "dark web" scene with the company he created, Emergence, Inc.

Flash forward to decades later, where Leo, finds out how much he's tied to Vince. But did I get to the part where bodies start showing up at Leo's door? Nope.

This book reminds me so much of American Psycho, and I stopped listening to that as well this year. It has been compared to this book/film and I see why. Vince is a misogynist. The writing is very anti-woman. I'm disappointed because I wanted to broaden my sci-fi shelf.

I have to give this (for the amount I read) 1/5 stars.

Did I want to know how it ends? Yes. Do I think I'll be able to find out? No. I just couldn't get through all the nastiness towards women. Maybe, I can try and pick up where I left off but I'm not sure.

ARC provided by the author and the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

DNFed at 47%

WARNING REVIEW CONTAINS THEMES OF R*PE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT. Read at own risk, I have not censored the words.

I thought long and hard about how to review this book. I tried writing a review after finishing the book but I kept on deleting it and starting again, the words never coming simply and in the way I wanted them to. I needed to take a step back and really collect my thoughts again after what I read but I think I'm finally at a stage where I can talk about this book without getting as triggered as I did after DNFing.

I never ever DNF a book. The only time I "DNF" is when I don't have the time to commit to the book, when I'm just not feeling it or when I have other books that absolutely must be finished instead (hence the DNF). For me to DNF a book for a reason other than that is an extremely difficult feat to accomplish. I always push through books heck, I even pushed through The Sun Is Also A Star which I thought was never going to happen. But I guess what I'm trying to highlight here is that it takes A LOT for me to hate a book so much that I have to DNF which is unfortunately what happened with Bodies: A Romantic Bloodbath.

I tried, I really did. I thought it started well and I was already interested in the book from the premise. I read the blurb on NetGalley back when the book was categorised as Young Adult (and spoiler alert: this book is absolutely 100% NOT YA, it got taken into the adult section of NetGalley since then from what I heard). I was promised cloning and science fiction following a psychopathic main character who wanted to create the perfect clone of his ex-girlfriend who recently dumped him.

I could understand what the author was trying to do. He was trying to critique society's idealism and our constant need or obsession with perfection. And he isn't wrong, our world is obsessed with it, looking the right way, looking for the "perfect" somebody and trying to be "perfect" for other people and I could see why he wanted to criticise this idea in a science fiction novel. It doesn't take long to start thinking how this obsessiveness with perfection could affect our relationships on a personal level or how far we would take things to ensure absolute perfection. Overall, I suppose the question at the heart of this book was: if we had the opportunity to make people perfect around us, would we take it and what price would we pay for it?

I was really interested to see how that concept was going to be unpacked and so I read on. I read the first few pages and thought to myself "Hey this isn't so bad, it's a bit weird and twisty but I kinda like it" but it wasn't long before things spiralled from there. We are introduced first and foremost to Vince, a genius high schooler who recently got dumped by his girlfriend, Melissa. In revenge, he creates a clone of her, sure he had to kill the real Melissa to make her but it's not really death if the person is still alive. If you thought that was bad, it gets way worse. Vince started the book off as a virgin but it's not long until he starts having sex with Melissa and in ways that dehumanise and objectify her. Her main "purpose" for being alive was just to have mind-boggling sex with Vince until such a point where he would get bored and he'd kill her, regrow her genes and DNA and recreate the whole morbid cycle over and over again.

That already sounds bad enough for Melissa but things only start getting worse and worse, she's called all sorts of derogatory slurs such as " dumb c*nt" or "B*tch" and if she dares to speak out against it, she just gets killed over and over, used as a sex slave again and again and again. It was sickening to read about all this and it was even more sickening that all of the men in the book were sex obsessed to the point where they didn't care about the girl's personality or anything else, if she could arouse them, then who even cared about anything else?

It was because of that I found it extremely hard to relate to any of the characters, none of them were likeable (which I suppose was the point) but that decision didn't "add" anything to the story. Characterisation, as I always point out, is like the "flavouring" to the story, it makes the story interesting and enjoyable. Without characters that I like or characters that are relatable in some regard, the book will feel bland or boring. I didn't feel anything towards any of the characters (unless you count absolute disgust) and I found that I got to the stage where I honestly couldn't care less about what they did or didn't do. I wasn't invested from the start but I kept pushing on to see if my opinion would change. (Spoiler alert: it did not).

Another reason why I'm giving this a one star (despite not finishing the book), I wanted the book to go somewhere but I felt like it just circled around the cloning and sex (which honestly should've had a smaller role than what it actually had which was, the whole story). I wanted the story to focus in on those ethical and metaphysical themes but it never went into detail about it. Looking back at what this book was trying to achieve (assuming that I'm right about the criticism of perfection and an idealistic society), I reckon that yes okay, the sex part was a good criticism however, there was no need to go over and over and over about it. The desire for perfect sex is one criticism but there are so many others that you can look into that would've progressed the story onwards instead of circumnavigating over the sex arc. That was what bothered me a lot as well as the extremely graphic detail in which this misogyny, rape and dehumanisation was occurring.

This book overall was extremely confronting and I wouldn't recommend it to a lot of people based off the triggers I found (and I honestly think I'm just scratching the surface here, there apparently was gun violence and a school shooting later in the book but I can't confirm that because I only read half the book before it got to a stage where I honestly felt physically sick continuing on). From what I alone saw, this book had graphic rape scenes, graphic suicide scenes, fatshaming, blatant misogyny, dehumanising women, objectifying women, misogynistic slurs, homophobia displayed towards intersex people, transphobia, depression, violence towards women, sexual assault, possessiveness, explicit language and graphic sex scenes. Yet again, those are the ones I found and they probably only are a handful of the trigger warnings actually contained in this book. There's probably a whole more (because as said I only read 160 pages of this 300+ paged book before DNFing) but just note that the majority of those triggering scenes were described in graphic and explicit detail especially the rape scenes. If you have been through any of the abuse mentioned above I would strongly advise against reading this book. I haven't ever been in a situation like that and even I was super uncomfortable and struggling to push through.

That being said, this isn't necessarily a book I would recommend to other people, I tried to like it and I even forced myself to push through it but it got to a point where I was not enjoying this story at all, I couldn't like the characters and the plot was more sex-focused than on the overall philosophical theme. This book had so much potential and I really wished it explored that more because the sex was just too much and it got to the point where it felt completely unnecessary. It didn't add anything to the story, just a whole heap of trigger warnings.

ACTUAL RATING: 0.5 STARS

This one is a tough one to review. I loved a few parts of it bit absolutely hated other parts. I was so excited to read this one as I find the cover to be gorgeous and the blurb was enticing with promises of a dark, bloody novel. I was rewarded with plenty of blood and gore and some fantastic twisted scenes, however more often then not I was beyond confused and would have to re-read the section to try to figure put what was going on. I felt like it was all over the place jumping between character POVs without making much sense. For me the story just didn't flow very well. The ending also felt like it was just left hanging and there was no real resolution to the story. Overall, I think it has potential and if you can keep up with the rapidly shifting POV then it would be a great book.

I went into this book with the knowledge of how dark it was and all of the trigger warnings that went along with that. That was all fine, I knew it was going to be a creepy read but honestly, it just wasn't a good read. I didn't like any of the characters, who all felt pretty darn flat, the writing was a bit blah and the plot was messy. I didn't finish this one and wouldn't recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley providing a complimentary advanced copy of Bodies: A Romantic Bloodbath by Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev in exchange for my honest review.

TW: honestly the trigger warning for this book is exhaustive. Violence, gore, assault, sexual assault, graphic self-harm, mental illness, etc.

Watching the rating on this book continue to drop was almost like watching a sporting event. I started this book optimistic. I knew Bodies would be weird going into it, the question was if it'd be on the right or the wrong side of weird. Unfortunately no matter how much I wanted to enjoy this book I simply couldn't.

The concept of clones is not a new one, but this book had potential to explore the way that clones can infiltrate society is a way that is simply unavoidable. However it spent more time on overwhelming violence, sexual fantasies and poor portrayal of women. This book was pitched as a mystery/thriller, but failed to execute that at all. I was extremely uncomfortable with the way that women are treated in this book. They are depicted as objects for the men to either control, have sex with or kill.

I won't spend much time going into all the problems this book has, I will simply end this review by telling you this was not a book I enjoyed nor would recommend to anyone, and I wish I had not read it.

I can't say whether or not I really enjoyed Bodies or if I was indifferent to it - to put it simply I am not sure how to feel. Bodies: A Romantic Bloodbath is a very unique read and does contain quite a few triggers (which were noted in the description on Netgalley for anyone curious). It took me a bit to really get into the flow of this book and it did seem rather chaotic but by the end I was enjoying it. It was very graphic and violent but as a long time Horror fan that didn't bother me, I would just say if you're finding yourself stuck in the beginning to push through because it is worth it in the end.

WTF did I just read?
I struggled with this one so much that it was almost a DNF. This wasn’t even due to the subject matter, I went in knowing about the triggers, no this was because it gave me a headache. The storyline bounced around so much that if I set the book down and picked it up I would have no idea what was going on. The blurb had me intrigued, but this just wasn’t for me.

I struggled with this one, and it wasn’t entirely because of the subjects – I’d seen the trigger warnings so knew to expect them. However I wasn’t expecting them in the style presented, I thought they’d add to the story more, but it just seemed like the author wanted to throw as much sex and rape in as possible.

I honestly felt like this was written by a hormonal teenage boy, especially the first sections – it was not pleasant to read at all, but I pushed through. Additionally everything else sexual throughout the book was all about pleasing the man, never pleasing the woman.

Frustratingly the underlying idea behind it all is an interesting one; that the science could be discovered to actually create clones, then the moral aspects related to it all. The initial ideas for good, but then the devastating routes the reality could lead humanity – such as curing diseases, replacing children taken too soon, improving certain genes (to either avoid psychopathic behaviour or just to make someone more loving), etc. To me that was such an interesting idea, but one I don’t think was really portrayed in the actual story. There were lots of disjointed sections that never really came together nicely which was also a shame.

This one really wasn’t for me, I didn’t enjoy the style of writing or how the plot was executed, so I don’t think I’ll be reading other works by the author. Additionally, I think that if you feel you have to add a note at the end explaining to the readers what you were trying to get across in the story, then the story hasn’t done its job.

2.5 stars
Trigger Warnings - murder, rape, sexual assault, violence against women and suicide

When a genius but sociopathic high school student Vince Nilsson's girlfriend breaks up with him he reacts in a violent and world altering way. Cloning the girl that he professes to love will set off a chain reaction that will have global consequences.

Where do I start? The beginning of this book is very graphic and violent and I had to push through as the premise of clones was very intriguing. I do think that the violence and sexual assault was gratuitous and took away from the very interesting themes that were in the book regarding the moral and ethical issues of a clone.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review

Vince, an obsessed genius teenager fabricates a clone to replace the girlfriend that dumped him, but has to kill the original first. With gene manipulation he builds a better Melissa, then realizing the potential creates an underground cloning empire. Then we meet Leo Oaks, who decades later receives a body at his door, his own!

Starting with an ominous and shock-worthy prologue this presents a narrative that is intense, unconventionally intimate and sometimes eerie. With a melancholic vibe it gifts you a WTF just happened mentality, is gruesome in many instances but utterly engaging. Just embrace the weird.

It is so blunt, a lot of people will find quite a few scenes offensive or hard to swallow, but I think it is done to show the brutality of the character/situation and makes you think about morality — that sometimes elusive line between right and wrong. Presenting gut-punching revelations, it is more emotional and personal than you'd expect. The parts with Leo are esoteric, even endearing and a complex mystery with conspiracy tidbits thrown in the mix. All these stories do intertwine at some point.

Ambitious though flawed and uneven with sparks of genius. It is a bit whiplashy and the back and forth can be jarring, especially between different POVs, a lot of them seemingly coming out of nowhere. In my opinion, the story would have benefited from a more straightforward type of storytelling with fewer characters thrown into the forefront.

Some of the themes it explores are obsession, identity and equality, and what exactly is humanity.

It's a tough as nails, compelling mystery cloning conspiracy-thriller with philosophical interludes and surprisingly romance!

Thank you Net Galley and the Publisher for a free ARC.

For me the characters and storyline fell a little short. I was not really able to connect with the characters and I also really had a hard time understanding what overall the story was trying to convey. The writing style was easy for me to get through however my interest didn't stay held well by this book.