The first one was this hillarious smalltown 20 year old cishet guy, and for whatever fucking reason the dude decided he was gonna read fucking Manhunt by Gretchen Felker Martin, which was such a bruh moment. I felt like you need the context of at least Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones to get it, but I also could not stop this guy reading it, I was so morbidly curious.

Guy concluded that it was Misogynistic and had too much sex in it, which was a big lmao to me. I guess he read this 'cause it says it's splatterpunk, and bro is big into S. Craig Zahler novels, but chat: Zahler writes books where "torture porn" is putting a live scorpion in a dude's stomach. It's entirely "woooooah bro!!!" spectacle, where Manhunt is an unflinching depiction of and engagement with extremely brutal trauma. A fuckin "check the cw's" kinda book. He fuckin noped out at like 30% lmao.

The other is that I forced my wife to read The Last Girl Scout by Natalie Ironside! That actually went acceptably, she kinda likes it, which is cool cause it's a nifty little (750 pages or w/e) book. This is the only time a weird, freaky, horrifying "A Novel" rec has worked out for me; I can recommend books all day, I'm Not Bad at it, but this specific category of "weird" books makes people recoil, which is funny.