Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova

2 reviews

madmantha's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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

5.0

Absolutely loved this book. I highly recommend seeing if your local library has the audiobook as well. 

I’ve now reread it multiple times and enjoy it more and more each reading. It’s such a poetic and circular story. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Abandonment, Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Pregnancy, Stalking, and Body horror

Moderate: Infidelity, Emotional abuse, Sexism, and Sexual content

Minor: Animal death, Car accident, Genocide, Outing, Chronic illness, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Sexual harassment, Alcoholism, Ableism, Classism, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Toxic relationship, Kidnapping, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Animal cruelty, Cursing, Deadnaming, Deportation, Gun violence, Self harm, Stalking, Terminal illness, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, Racism, Religious bigotry, Incest, Misogyny, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Cultural appropriation, Fatphobia, Fire/Fire injury, Hate crime, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Child abuse, Child death, and Emotional abuse

aeeklund's review

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective 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

5.0

I devoured this book. Ravenously. It was dark and rich and knowing and full. The descriptions of the plot—of a family invited by its matriarch to attend her funeral and receive their inheritance, of those family members manifesting gifts (or not) years later, of their generations starting to fall at the hands of a mysterious figure and their quest to understand why taking them back to the birthplace of that matriarch—hardly begin to do this story justice. The jacket copy, magical as it is, is the sparest frame upon which a truly transformative experience of a novel is woven, alchemized.

Zoraida Cordova’s first adult novel is a breathless, magical story of falling stars and roses blooming from bodies, transmutation into moonstone and softly speaking fireflies, the planting of seeds borne from bodies and vines erupting from the ground in stark defense of outrage or intrusion.

This book spans decades, generations, continents. It tours Europe with a circus and puts down roots in a secluded valley. It purifies with fire and it rebuilds from ash.

It studies silence and screaming and whispers and song, art and cooking and writing and loving, loss and gain and bargaining and settling, love in all its many and varied forms, some truer than we let ourselves see and some elaborate lies we tell or are told.

And the women. Women strong and weak, vulnerable and stubborn. In denial, in acceptance, in all their nuanced, many-faceted glory. I loved these characters and the histories they spun, entangled together like the roots of the orchids, laurels, and ceiba trees they all channel or reflect.

This book was transporting. And important. And so, so lovely that I am aching for it, even now having crossed its expanse. Read this.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Child death, Child abuse, and Sexual content

Minor: Animal cruelty and Panic attacks/disorders