Reviews with content warning for Death - Sestry Blueovy

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Sestry Blueovy by Coco Mellors

559 reviews

bookmarked_by_kate's review against another edition

3.0

emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

jennyzreads's review against another edition

3.0

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I went on a bit of a journey with this book. I don't think I started really enjoying it until well into the second half, and it was only by the last quarter that it finally won me over. I liked the writing, it has a quality that is capable of sweeping you up in it, and I suppose that's what propelled me through because for the majority of this book I couldn't stand or relate to its characters, the four sisters (one dead, three grieving) at its center.

In a family prone to addiction, the self-destructive habits of the oldest and youngest sisters and the way they were at each other's throats whenever their paths crossed was so exhausting. Their middle sister Bonnie, an ascetic professional boxer, was the only one I came close to liking and rooting for, and by the end her story actually did win me over in a big way. I also liked the way the author wrote about New York, I think she captured its unique magic accurately and beautifully.

Now for the audiobook review. The narration of this audiobook is so whack, I don't even know where to start. The narrator is not American and the New York accent she tries to affect for the sisters is so preposterously unidentifiable, it drove me absolutely nutty. The best I could do to clock it would be to say she was trying for a sort of New York Jew, Yiddish inflected lilt, which makes zero sense since that has nothing to do with the sisters' identities or the neighborhood of Manhattan where they grew up. It was maddening. By the end though, I was listening at 1.5 speed and had kind of gotten used to it, plus she reads in a sort of staccato which eventually became more rhythmic than irritating. Overall though, really bizarre, except for when she gets to do British accents, which she's great at. I wished she could just do British accents for everyone, even the Americans...it would have made for a much more pleasant listening experience tbh.

Content Warnings

shesflippinpages's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

evief's review against another edition

4.5

emotional hopeful sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Another hit from Coco Mellors about grief and healing. Complicated characters and very believable dysfunctional family dynamics

Content Warnings

kellijones's review against another edition

3.5

dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was a well written book about self destruction, and grief, and addiction, and relationships. It was easy to be frustrated with the characters, who were well fleshed out in the story. I'm glad it didn't have a perfectly tidy ending, because life is not full of tidy endings. There was too much objectionable content for me, and I did not relate to the characters much, so I didn't love this story.

Content Warnings

booksandabackpack's review against another edition

2.0

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Blue Sisters is the story of 3 sisters arriving at the one year anniversary of the fourth sister’s death. While the characters were developed as well as the plot, this book was a big miss for me.

Every character was harshly distinct from one another with fantastic jobs and unique traits that felt tremendously cliche to me. A family of four sisters all so wildly different from one another felt so forced and like a box was ticked. It wasn’t just with their careers but their sexuality, fashion, living situation, and everything in between. All the side characters were forced into this distinction as well, with their unique identifiers being pushed to the forefront. This completely took me out of the story and felt like a checked off list more than a naturally diverse fictional world. I took multiple notes throughout when a new bauble of a character would appear because it just baffled me.

While the hodge podge variety of characters took me out of the story, what turned me against it was the treatment of addiction and the power within an age gap relationship. Addiction was clearly a struggle within this family yet it doesn’t tie together demonstrably. The best way I can say it is, icky. Although I’m not looking for a fiction book to promote a healthy way of handling a disease like addiction, this one read too flippant and discombobulated to appreciate it.

The last quarter was so much stronger than the first half or so but the epilogue was such a disappointment.

What Mellors did masterfully though was make each of the characters clearly alive on the page, even if they were weighed down by cliches. I’d like to read from her again in a story where the characters aren’t forced to fill out every possibly diverse aspect of a human being.

Content Warnings