Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - Sundial

Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Sundial by Catriona Ward

76 reviews

erinbarton's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

1.5

i have never felt more catfished by a blurb in my entire life

while it is technically correct that some of the plot revolves around rob fearing her daughter callie, and her and callie travelling to their desert property, this is definitely not representative of the story. a more accurate description would be:

rob is trapped in a toxic marriage with her husband, irving. they have two young daughters, callie and annie. rob views annie as an angelic golden child, and struggles to connect to the precocious and seemingly troubled callie, who irving has manipulated to act out against rob. when rob fears callie wants to hurt her sister annie, rob takes callie to her childhood home in the desert, sundial, and recounts her traumatic childhood growing up and being raised by hippy parents who carried out scientific experiments on dogs.

i enjoyed the first 100 pages of this and was decently interested in the family dynamic and especially callie’s character. initially this was reminiscent of another family-centred psychological thriller which i had read and loved: sharp objects by gillian flynn. however, when the flashbacks to the past timeline began i really lost interest. the plot took such a bizarre turn and was from then on majority flashback of rob’s past. because of this, it quickly became clear that chapters from callie’s pov served no purpose other than to break up the super long account of rob’s past

i thought the whole concept of the genetically modified dog experiments were ridiculous, and the reveal that rob and jack had also had the same genetic experiment carried out on them because they had a “killer” gene was even more stupid. the book had even more twists/reveals after this all more stupid than the last: rob and jack were adopted as toddlers and had killed their birth mum after being locked in cages their entire lives up til then, callie can for some unexplained but also irrelevant reason see ghosts (and this is never once relevant to the plot), and the final reveal, annie was really the “evil” child all along and callie was simply trying to stop annie from hurting other people. all of these were beyond the realm of suspended disbelief and just lead to more questions. how did rob as a malnourished four year old manage to take her mother by surprise and physically overpower her enough to strangle her? why could callie see ghosts when there are no other paranormal elements involved in the book? how does a 9 year old annie have the cognitive and social development to convincingly manipulate every adult around her? just feels like the author threw a lot of shit at the wall to see what stuck and in fact none of it did <\spoiler>

Content Warnings

elle_e_d_light's review

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Like Ward's other books, this book is DARK. If you are sensitive to animal cruelty or domestic abuse, you should probably stay far away from this book because it has both of those throughout the whole story.

If I had to categorize this book, I'd say it best fits into Psychological Horror. Emphasis on the "horror". I won't say I enjoyed reading it—I hate animal cruelty—but I thought it was very well written and very good for the genre. I think I liked "Little Eve" a bit more than this, but that's because I loved the more gothic feel of it. I can't decide if I think this one is slightly better written. I liked "Little Eve" and "Sundial" far more than "Last House on Needless Street", which I didn't much care for. From the other reviews I've seen, it seems to be that the more someone likes "Needless Street", the less they like "Sundial" and vice versa.

While I thought this book was good, it's really not the type of book that one recommends to people. At least not without several content warnings.

Content Warnings

01_in_emilyon's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.75

Content Warnings

sunshinestark's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

Content Warnings

scalygusgus1993's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

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

4.0

A deeply unsettling novel that I couldn’t put down

Content Warnings

kamreadsandrecs's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

So I picked this up because I needed a bit of a break from the Pink Carnation reread I was doing, and what better to cleanse my brain than a horror novel right? So I fed a handful of picks through a randomizer, and Sundial was the one that popped up, so I settled in and got started.

And did any of you know it was possible for horror to have layers? BECAUSE THIS BOOK HAS LAYERS. IT IS A VERITABLE LAYER CAKE OF HORRORS. AN ONION EVEN.

First layer - What it’s like being in an abusive relationship, and what it takes to survive in one, and then later, what it takes to escape from it.

Second layer - Learning that what you thought was your past, your history, was utterly untrue. This is utterly terrible because so much of what makes us who we are is our past. So if you find out that what you thought was your history is, in fact, untrue? That sort of thing is horrific - especially so when you learn that your ACTUAL history is nothing short of nightmarish.

Third layer - Learning that you were altered without your knowledge, and that it was done “for your benefit” and “for the benefit of the world.” First, imagine finding out that who you thought you are is NOT who you actually are, and then follow that up with the whammy of learning that you were ALTERED in order to, supposedly, keep yourself and everyone around you safe. Imagine not having this explained to you. Imagine not being ASKED if this is what you wanted. It was just DONE to you.

Fourth layer - Finding out that you may in fact be a monster - and that the monster inside of you might be coming out once more to destroy everything you love and care about.

Fifth layer - Looking at your own child, and wondering if the monster you harbored inside you is also in them, and that said monster is beginning to manifest.

When I finished this novel I kind of stared at the ceiling of my room because WHAT IN THE ACTUAL EVERLOVING FUCK? What makes this even more powerful is that the above layers of horror are also twined around themes of siblinghood and motherhood: how it’s possible to love, hate, and even fear your siblings and/or your parents, and how parents can love, hate, and fear their own children.. Most media portrays the sibling and parent/child dynamic as straightforward, but this story really tackled the complexities and nuances of those relationships.

So overall, this book is an amazing, nightmarish read. The slow reveal of the utter horror of the truth at the heart of the story, the peeling back of all those layers of history were immense fun, especially backed by the themes of siblinghood and parenthood that formed the thematic backbone of the story overall. The twists were great too: I didn’t see them coming, but they also made sense in the overall context of the story. This was absolutely the cleanse my brain needed, and I’m also going to have to shovel more of Ward’s books onto my TBR, because this was INCREDIBLE.

Content Warnings