Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

La sanadora de Zalindov by Lynette Noni

114 reviews

klaudiao's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual harassment

l1brarygirl's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

3.0

I was into it...but then I got bored in the middle 🫣 I almost DNF this at 47% -  thank you to my sister for telling me to push through because the last 25% 😮🙌🏻

oh and that last line...

"The Rebel Princess was finally ready to rise." YAAAAASS 👌🏻 I also guessed Tilda was her mom early on and kinda suspected she had healing abilities but her never using them or alluding to them the entire time had me second guessing myself. I also thought Jaren was like a royal cousin or something, so him being the prince was a cool twist. I would have been soooo PO if Tipp died though, I was ready to throw hands!!

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child death, Confinement, Panic attacks/disorders, Torture, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual violence, Vomit, Grief, Medical trauma, and Murder

Minor: War

that_awkwardbook's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

I haven't read anything similar before. And I'm in awe. Everything came through beautifully in the end. I can wait to read the next book. 

This book is about a  young girl, that has been in prison for the last 10 years. She is the prison healer, but keeps mostly to herself and stays out of trouble. 

A must read. In my opinion. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, and War

ameydireads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

“Here at Zalindov, the only person you can trust is yourself.”

This might be my favourite read so far this year! The twists, especially those at the end of the book, are amazing. Serious vibes of Hunger Games and Avatar: the last airbender. It is a dark fantasy and whilst some parts were challenging to read and weighed heavily on my mind, there were also other parts that brought a sense of hope.
But please be sure to review the trigger warnings before diving into this book. This might not be suitable for everyone.

TW: mentions of rape, torture, drug abuse, overdosing on drugs, self harm, child abuse, child death, violence.

Okay, now let’s get to the plot. The story is set in Zalindov, a prison where nobody ever leaves once they’ve entered. The grimm conditions of this prison and the injustice is mind boggling. As if being condemned to die in this prison isn't horrible enough, there are also guards who don’t shy away from violence and use and misuse the prisoners to their liking.

Our main character, Kiva, is the prison healer and has been in Zalindov for 10 years. Her prison job forces her to brand the new prisoners which goes directly against being a healer. But hey, sometimes you’ve got to do things to survive, can't really judge here. Kiva wants to fight for herself, let loose the rebellious fire in her, but she is also smart enough to know how to survive in this prison. She is secretly in communication with her family on the outside and hopes that they will make true of their promise to come for her.

But with the Rebel Queen’s arrival to Zalindov, sick and in no condition to carry out her sentence, Kiva volunteers to take the Rebel Queen’s place and claim the sentence as her own. What in the Hunger Games…!
"My name is Kiva Meridan, and I claim her sentence as my own."

If Kiva manages to survive the Trials of the four elements (air, fire, water, and earth), see and the Rebel Queen are both free to leave the prison! Freedom is waiting.

I really liked to read more about Kiva’s scientific side and the dynamic between her and the other prisoners. She warms up to Naari and Jaren, both of them being new to the prison. She cares a lot about Tipp, I mean it’s impossible to not love this character!!
“The world needs people like him out there in it, shining light into the dark places.”

THE TWISTS IN THIS BOOK ARE BETTER THAN I EXPECTED.
!! Spoilers incoming !!

Here I am, thinking that Kiva and Jaren have a chance to be together after finding out Jaren is actually the crown prince. However, this becomes more complicated with the revelation that Kiva is in fact the rebel princess and she’s getting ready to take back the kingdom?! 

Jaren is such a sweet person and he has proven on multiple occasions that his heart is in the right place. He’s always there for Kiva, a loyal companion. Yet, I am worried that he will have his heart broken in the next book. I dread to see another version of Cal Calore and Mare Barrow (Red Queen). At least in their case they both knew they were both on opposite sides!
I actually think (and hope) that Kiva wants to be the rebel princess but having to betray Jaren will contradict her feelings for him. While I don’t believe she’s deliberately using Jaren, I guess she will be torn between her destiny and her affection for him. AAAARGH… the politics in this book, secretly brewing in the background and ready to wreak havoc, adds an interesting layer to this story.
Either way, she better not hurt him!

I had a lot of questions and doubts whilst reading this book and for sure I won’t be the only one! Just trust me when I say that the story will make sense in the end.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Addiction and Rape

Minor: Self harm and War

becksbecks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

devoured this book in one day, very entertaining with several twists (one predictable and one not!), but sometimes the writing was repetitive (particularly over backstory) and dragged. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Torture, Violence, and Vomit

Moderate: Child abuse and Sexual harassment

Minor: Addiction, Drug abuse, and Sexual assault

ashlyncherie's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

THAT ENDING! Holy cow. I haven’t had a plot twist do me like that in a while. I freaking loved this!! It had everything I could have wanted. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Sexual assault and Sexual violence

Minor: Addiction, Drug abuse, Rape, Self harm, Grief, and Sexual harassment

agiraffereads's review against another edition

dark inspiring medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

That end🤯

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Drug abuse, Physical abuse, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Domestic abuse

rinku's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Fire/Fire injury, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Addiction, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Self harm, Medical content, Death of parent, Abandonment, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Rape, and Pregnancy

the_jesus_fandom's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

I enjoyed this book and I especially loved Tipp (some of his scenes almost made me cry). All of the side characters were lovable, though, in their own ways. The book felt slow at times, but that's probably because my attention span has been bad. The descriptions were super good and especially the water trial was very stressful to read.

There was a bit of discrepancy in Kiva saying she helped everyone cause that was her job, regardless of what they did, but then she refuses to help a guard and actively makes his sickness worse.

So why exactly are you helping a person who killed his children but not a guard who sexually harasses people? Is it cause you didnt see the man kill his children but you did see the guard sexually harass people? Bit of a double standard.

My only major grievances: eyes don't have to have stone colours. Just say her eyes are yellow (amber).

And yeah, the plot twist. Not about Jaren, the one about Kiva. On the one hand it explains why her family was so sure of being able to rescue her, but on the other hand we saw her alone with Tilda various times. Why did she not call her "mother" then? I get that maybe she was still super on alert, but apparantly things were safe enough for her to tell the story of how her parents met. It also makes it a bit hypocritical that she was mad at Jaren for hiding his identity from her. And lastly, it does make the ending of this series pretty predictable. Jaren and Kiva will get together, thus uniting both sides, but not before Kiva does a lot of soul-searching and her angry siblings will push her to take her revenge. That relationship is going to break, we'll get lots of angst cause Kiva is heartbroken, etc. I think one of her siblings will probably die and his/her last words will either be for her to stop this fighting and make up or to continue the fight. I'm thinking it'll be the brother and he'll say the latter. Idk, if I'm wrong don't tell me, I want to read the books to see if I'm right!

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Self harm, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, Torture, Blood, Medical content, Murder, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Cursing, Rape, Vomit, Death of parent, and Abandonment

mrobin14's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

The writing at times is very immature. Often thoughts would be scattered paragraphs away from where it started, or events would become repetitively told to the reader within the same chapters. Some events that transpired don’t make sense to have been included, it feels like they were cheap shots at making a “diverse” and “deep” cast. Pages were clearly taken from Lemony Snicketts writing in silly chapter set ups, but it just makes it feel like a poorly written YA novel. Feel as though the story idea is good, but needed a more stern publisher to steer it in the right direction. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Dementia, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Police brutality, Suicide attempt, Sexual harassment, and War