Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

31 reviews

jojothefool's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

I had a lot of fun with this audiobook. The supernatural stuff was a bit confusing via audio for me, I think I may have followed some scenes a lot better if I were reading instead of listening, but I got enough of it to get the haunting feelings of the scary scenes. I will say that this book has representation of a queer community I am so not familiar with which was interesting lol there’s a lot of drag racing and not the kind that I’m used to. Car stuff is just not for me, I don’t understand it and I don’t want to, so those parts were kinda hard to get through. I liked the overall mystery and ookiness of the novel. There’s a small yet remarkable romance that I found myself shipping far before I thought the book would do anything with it, so when it happened I was very pleased. Overall a fun time, especially for the toxic codependency queer ship enjoyers. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Drug abuse, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Blood, Suicide, Physical abuse, Alcoholism, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Sexual content, and Drug use

Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Self harm, Vomit, Animal death, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Murder, and Homophobia

Minor: Death of parent, Cannibalism, and Car accident

holyschmitz's review against another edition

challenging dark 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? Yes

5.0

Woah. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Blood, Murder, Death of parent, Mental illness, Gore, Drug use, Sexual content, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Death, Classism, Toxic friendship, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Drug abuse, Cursing, Body horror, and Alcohol

fpwoper's review

dark 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? Yes

4.5

While the book starts slow and sort of confusing, once it gets going, it really gets going. I barely put it down when I got past page 50 or so. I loved the writing style the way horror and grief and repression are all woven together. It's been a while since I read a book that wrapped up this well, too, to be honest.
This book is terrifying and violent and very present despite being steeped in substance abuse and depression and it is so, so beautiful. (I just wish this book had clicked in the first 20 pages instead of after 50).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Sexual content, Alcoholism, and Violence

Moderate: Homophobia

dodgeremerson's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Body horror, Sexual content, Toxic friendship, Death, Self harm, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, Alcohol, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Confinement, and Murder

Moderate: Homophobia, Cursing, Medical content, Physical abuse, Classism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Death of parent, Drug use, and Drug abuse

Minor: Religious bigotry, Car accident, Transphobia, and Death of parent

jessnrusso's review

dark slow-paced

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

2.0

DNF-ed at 200 pages ... this was just not for me.

Even with the southern spooky ghost story theme, queer characters who party and race cars in the off time of their masters studies, I was so bored. The writing was dense and repetitive, never were any of the supernatural parts actually creepy, and the characters were so simple. And soooo much macho-alpha-masculine melodrama.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Grief, Alcohol, Death, Drug abuse, and Drug use

zafi's review

dark emotional sad tense 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? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Suicide, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Alcoholism and Drug abuse

perkyanda's review

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

If you like horror dark academia mystery southern gothic chaotic bi energy death magic, all with a trans character who it literally does not matter is trans and who you can’t tell is trans til it just happens to come up, I cannot recommend Summer Sons highly enough. The only thing that could improve it are more female characters but then it couldn’t be a book that is largely about male relationships. And it has one of the BEST scenes with a female character who is otherwise unimportant I’ve seen in a long time.

And it’s spicy at points which was NOT expected in a, well, horror but not horror but horror ok mystery maybe maybe suspense? Is dark academia even a genre or just a sub genre or a blend genre I don’t fucking know book

And while I normally don’t actually love spice in normal books and was surprised at the level of detail it didn’t feel gratuitous it felt extremely relevant to character development bc repression and male friendship and sexuality is a big part of the book

Honestly this book is just a sweltering mess of OH MY GOD GO TO CLASS and DO YOU WANT TO GET YOUR DUMB ASS MURDERED TOO and IF YOU TALKED ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED which I guess is a big part of why it has to be about idiot boys instead of idiot girls, even though as an idiot woman I prefer reading about idiot girls. But anyway, these idiot dirt bag druggie boys are adorable and I want to give them all a good talking to. But hey really excellent book about male friendship and relationships and the blurry (ha!) line between homoeroticism and brotherhood. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Grief, Sexual content, Blood, Drug abuse, Alcohol, Death, Drug use, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Cancer, Classism, Misogyny, Sexism, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, and Racism

Spicy

caspian_the_pauper's review

dark emotional mysterious sad slow-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Homophobia, Death, Alcoholism, Sexual violence, Abandonment, Sexual assault, Self harm, Murder, Stalking, Drug abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Mental illness

booksbeyondthebinary's review

dark emotional mysterious 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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Gore, Toxic relationship, and Death

Moderate: Suicide, Murder, and Drug abuse

therainbowshelf's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.0

I don't know how to review this. I feel like I didn't enjoy it as much as it deserves, though I did enjoy it. I couldn't fully get into Andrew or Sam as characters, so even though the writing was good and I enjoyed the story overall (other than a few things that needed a bit more development toward the end), I feel so-so on it. I also don't love atmospheric books, and this was very atmospheric. This came to me from Rainbow Crate Book Box.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Drug abuse, Toxic relationship, Classism, Grief, Sexual content, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Suicide, Blood, Drug use, Addiction, Alcohol, Homophobia, Torture, Alcoholism, Murder, Confinement, Death, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Rape

Minor: Death of parent

Internalized homophobia