{"id":2467,"date":"2025-04-04T09:18:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T09:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=2467"},"modified":"2025-04-04T09:18:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T09:18:00","slug":"book-review-brood-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=2467","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Brood 17"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Brood 17<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

by SE Reynolds<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> Mystery, Thriller & Suspense \/ Horror<\/p>\n

ISBN: <\/strong>9798310494053<\/p>\n

Print Length:<\/strong> 331 pages<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reviewed by Warren Maxwell<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>A horrifying exploration of the darkest corners of sexuality<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201c\u2018Ivan, you wouldn\u2019t be the first doctor to want to have sex with their patient, and you won\u2019t be the last. I did, too, in my day. Why do you think I\u2019m a teacher?\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Opening with a horrific, mid-copulation murder, Brood 17<\/em> is a dark, rampaging novel about sexuality, violence, trauma, and the way childhood memories come back to haunt us. It follows Misty Dawn, a young woman obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe and suffering from a mysterious \u201cinfection\u201d that propelled her to kill her boyfriend and land in a psychiatric hospital for evaluation while awaiting a court date.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her psychologist, Doctor Samuel, is the at-times robotic, at-times troubled professional tasked with evaluating Misty Dawn\u2019s mental status and making a recommendation to the court on whether or not her defense of insanity is legitimate. Their conversations, rendered from the dueling perspectives of Misty Dawn and Doctor Samuel, allow strange facts and memories to boil to the surface\u2014like the hideous fate of Misty Dawn\u2019s sister and Doctor Samuel\u2019s painful sexual history\u2014and spark an unorthodox, volatile patient-doctor relationship.<\/p>\n

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\u201c\u2019I\u2019m just reminding you that you must always tell the truth, and then we can better understand the whys.\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018You mean why I fucked my boyfriend in the heart with a butcher knife?\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Among the book\u2019s singular elements, a brash, unapologetic approach to sex stands out. Although it is not quite an erotic novel, there are no qualms about delving into painful, titillating, and taboo aspects of sex in intense detail. Misty Dawn uses her sexuality as a weapon in a way that is not just abrasive but genuinely disarming on the page. Her and Samuel\u2019s encounters are filled with charged, beautifully orchestrated dialogue. There\u2019s a sense that a chess game unfurls in which Misty Dawn carefully tests Doctor Samuel\u2019s defenses and finds him vulnerable to her aggressive sexual displays.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Doctor Samuel\u2019s inability to find an adequate response sometimes begs belief given his professional training and experience, his ever-expanding backstory which includes his repressed childhood and sexless marriage gives credence to his timidity as well as creating a whole other playing field for the novel\u2019s examinations of sex and power dynamics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018For the record, my parents named me Misty Dawn because I was born when the sun was just touching the sky and the misty rain turned into fog.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Brood 17 <\/em>toes the delicate line of sharp poetic language and the more familiar prose of a thriller expertly. Some moments do appear melodramatic and clunky, perhaps too carefully designed to forward the plot, but the relationship that comes into being between Misty Dawn and Doctor Samuel has a real spark of life and quickly moves in unexpected directions. This is aided by the shifting perspectives that allow subtexts and unspoken secrets to fill out the almost theatrical machinations that play out in repeating psychological interviews.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What begins as the core question, why did Misty Dawn kill her boyfriend?<\/em>, quickly becomes sidelined for the far more compelling question of what will happen between her and her doctor and, ultimately, what will these two characters reveal about each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn angel face with Cupid blond curls metastasizes my view. Yes, metastasizes. My new favorite word I intend to use in the most inappropriate ways now that they locked me up.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A taut psychosexual thriller with darkly poetic prose, Brood 17 <\/em>imagines the twisted relationship between a beautiful, possibly insane, murderer and the man tasked with evaluating her mental status.<\/p>\n

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Thank you for reading Warren Maxwell\u2019s book review of Brood 17 <\/em>by S.E. Reynolds! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.<\/p>\n

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The post Book Review: Brood 17<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brood 17 by SE Reynolds Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense \/ Horror ISBN: 9798310494053 Print Length: 331 pages Amazon Reviewed by Warren Maxwell A horrifying exploration of the darkest corners of sexuality \u201c\u2018Ivan, you wouldn\u2019t be the first doctor to want to have sex with their patient, and you won\u2019t be the last. I did, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}