Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Real Life

Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

celinbean's review

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.75

Wallace truly is the og traumatized pathological people pleaser and it was a little heartbreaking to read his responses. All of this was honestly a lot to take in. This felt like a character study with wallace as the very observant narrator to whom no detail was too small but who also turned inward a lot to inspect his feelings. But despite that inward look i feel like we just reached the acknowledgement stage of his grief and trauma.

The whole friend group actually gave me anxiety bc they were all so mean and almost indifferent to each others feelings? And unwilling to actually try to understand each other? I also wanted to root for miller so much but the ending was not… entirely satisfying with what he did. I would’ve liked it if wallace actually found someone who’s gentle and who stands up for him but i guess i would’ve had to read a romance book if i wanted a true happy ending 🥲

Nevertheless this was such an addictive read that was wholly unexpected because ive been in a kind of slump where ive only really been reading/ listening to audiobooks. I quite literally could not stop reading and that hasn’t happened for me in a while. The prose was stunningly beautiful.

TW: rape of a child, sexual assault of a child, racism, disordered eating + vomiting

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evasteenberghs's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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qtree's review against another edition

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emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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_puberty2's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective 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

5.0

This is a beautiful piece of prose, especially for a debut novel. I blew through it in 3 days and was genuinely glued to the story. I just want to hug Wallace and be a friend to him that will treat him like an actual person, Brigit was the only real one.

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jordaneley's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

moonbabe_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional 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? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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nearlynina's review against another edition

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challenging emotional

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

Content Warnings

xenamollie's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

this was really not my fav, but i also kind of couldn’t put it down (in a not so enjoyable can’t-look-away way). i can’t decide if the characters felt well developed or not — the absolutely excessive over thinking sort of tricked me into thinking yes, but on reflection i don’t feel like i have a grasp on the characters at all — but even that feels intentional, like the main character expends so so so much energy on overthinking himself and others and yet all he has to show for it in the end is these bits and pieces of understanding.

it was a really tragic story but not without a tinge of optimism (or maybe i just imposed that on it so i could finish the book without feeling like absolute shit?). i wasn’t sure what to make of the interpersonal violence or what the intention was or what i was supposed to think of it. i guess all i can say was it made me wildly uncomfortable, which clearly was part of the point but definitely not the whole point. definitely feel like i was missing something.

biggest pet peeve with this book was it’s very important to me to be able to track where people/things are in space, and it was so difficult for me to do that throughout. i just felt like the descriptions of scene/setting/movement were extremely confusing and i very often could not follow, and it didn’t particularly strike me as intentional, so that really didn’t work for me.

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