it’s not unusual for me to be the unpopular opinion, but for once i actually enjoyed a book that other’s seem to rate low.

we had to remove this post follows kayleigh, a former moderator of disturbing and offensive content for a big social media company. the novel is kayleigh’s reflection on her time at the company and the relationships she formed there; she also mentions why she joint the company and why she left. this reflection is framed through a response to a lawyer (mr stitic), as her previous colleagues are involved in a lawsuit with the company.

i read this book in one day, it was addictive and so readable. my favourite part of the novel was definitely the writing style, especially bervoets’ similes. kayleigh’s voice and the conversational technique with mr stitic was effective, in fact i loved it and don’t think the novel could be told in any other way.

i’ve seen reviews saying that they wished bervoets had explored the images more and really shown more graphic content, however i disagree. the novel was so much focused on what the moderators saw but rather how this changed them, their psychology and their outlooks in life. the images bervoets used were clear with no excessive detail to soften the blow of the disturbing content, these images did what they had to and the lack of this detail also showed how redundant they became to the moderators. at the end of the book bervoets provides a list of her research, and this was a small aspect that i appreciated seeing especially as it made me realise the amount of research for a novel of this topic.

the images included in the novel still were disturbing, but as someone who watched the saw movies as a child and is obsessed with true crime i’m not usually effected that much by gore or disturbing content in literature, yet there was one moment that i was holding the book away from me and grimacing -

Spoiler

sigrid recalls a video she saw where a young boy around twelve puts knife between his big toe and second toe, and brings the blade down on the webbing.

the effect this job has the characters is gradual over the novel and i believe this was the most natural and shocking way. the job begins to change their values and language and reading the way they spoke made me feel disgusted, slurs and stereotypes and discrimination everywhere, until they are fundamental changed into dark people. while some parts of the novel definitely went over my head, this negative effect on the characters and their changed beliefs/morals is what i take away as the focal commentary of bervoets novel; the two main shocking plot moments being key in showing this.

this novel isn’t a new favourite for me, but my constant enjoyment throughout the novel and the way it surprised my low expectations, made me feel like it deserved a five from me. i just hope her other work gets translated because i would love to check them out.

if you go into this beware there are many trigger warnings and it is usually rated three or two so it isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve been thinking of giving it a go i say go for it otherwise it’ll be one of the novels you’re always wondering about. plus it’s short, if i can read it in a day so can you.

trigger warnings (i may miss a few but here are the main ones):
- suicide
- mental health
- animal abuse
- racism
- slurs
- homophobia
- sexual assault
- holocaust mentions
- distressing images of underage people
- terrorism
- bestiality
- self harm
- porn/sex scenes on page