Reviews with content warning for Abortion - Ripe

Reviews tagging 'Abortion'

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

151 reviews

cmc741's review

challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Reading this as a someone who’s not doing well atm and is also Called Cassie in hindsight wasn’t one of my best ideas. The ending was a bit of a let down but it’s definitely a book that will stick with me.

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page_with_no_i's review

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

One of the most depressing books I have ever read. But a well-crafted story.

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sararm's review

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.75

Cassie, the protagonist of Ripe, is extremely relatable: she works in corporate, has to disassociate to get on with her job and conjure up pretend-enthusiasm, struggles to perform normal actions against the backdrop of a city with extreme wealth disparity, and has, huh, clinic depression? An actual black hole?

The examination of corporate life in the tech sector is sharp and insightful. The way we are asked to pretend our jobs are part of our life mission, the way we allow them to overlap with our identity, how much our job signifies whether we've made it or not. And to do these pointless activities while living in a place filled with desperation, with an incoming pandemic and a climate crisis...

Ripe captures the utter hopelessness of this way of life, the failure at the core of it, so well. It's tense and stressful. This means that it's also fundamentally a hopeless, humourless novel. And you've got to wonder exactly what it wants to say, beyond I don't like it here.

Overall, I thought it was a bit uneven. The prose was largely wonderful, but the dialogue felt so so unnatural and stilted and the friendships, family and office dynamics rang a bit false. There is a particularly unbelievable fight with Nicole and Maria which took me out of the story.

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marmalou_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

“Once you get one job, then you get another job, and another job after that, and on and on. The years accumulate. Nothing about me has changed except the scale of my life“.

Found some of the imagery slightly repetitive but really enjoyed this book. Some dark themes and quite a tense read. 4 ⭐️ overall.

TW: burn-out, suicide, abortion, drugs, depression, bullying

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smokingintherain's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

3.25

This book made me sad in an existential way. Specifically regarding job choices and choosing to try to "fake it till you make it" at being happy.

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nathiddles_106's review against another edition

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dark sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.5

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whimsy_and_rigor's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

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

4.0

If you are a woman in tech, this will likely be a hard book to read. Or maybe it will validate all the feelings and experiences you’ve had.

If you have ever experienced depression, this will likely be a hard book to read. Or it will validate all the feelings and experiences you’ve had with depression. The black hole that follows her is a little on the nose, but it is powerful.

Her relationship with her father is so precious 🤍

I didn’t love the ending. At all. Especially as a woman who had had similar experiences.

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camdelo96's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.5

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loonaglow's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

saw far too much of myself in cassie and i love the use of a black hole to describe depression and family issues

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kelsiecrough's review

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Spoilers Ahead....
Here are the things that I liked:

the use of a unique form, with the definitions and examples being flashbacks
the symbolism of the black hole was interesting
I was invested in the main character and wanted her to succeed
The. subtle tying in of things that are seemingly disconnected
Every once in a while there was a paragraph that so crisp it had me completely immersed
the audiobook was pretty good too

Here are the things that I didn't like:

Everything that could possibly go wrong for the character went wrong. Anything that was good was so short-lived that it was very predictable that some thing would happen that would upset the main character or make her life more difficult. While I believe not making it easy for your character is important, making everything that could go wrong go wrong made the plot super predictable and lowered the stakes for the reader.
I really don't know how to feel about the black hole. On one hand, it was an interesting device to describe the complexity of generational trauma and depression. On the other hand, I wish it was used and explored just a little bit more throughout the book. I also think the fact that everything was going wrong for her plot-wise really softened the symbolism of her collapse mirrored by the black hole.
Every few paragraphs there was a sentence or two that spelled things out for the reader that I personally would've deleted in revisions.
Ending was ok, like I stated before, a little predictable. All the subtle tie-ins from throughout the book was nice, but based on the amount of time that was spent describing those things in the beginning, I would think their tie-in would be more pronounced than it was in its current list-like form.
Honestly, I felt like this could have been a set of short stories or a novella instead of a novel.

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