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Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones
53 reviews
sarah984's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This is a multi-pov novel set in Barbados in (aside from a few flashbacks) 1984 showcasing the explosive ways several people’s disparate lives come together in one moment in time.
This book left me a little conflicted. In a general technical sense, the writing is beautiful, particularly in the sections in second person, and while there was sort of a feeling of being somehow distanced from the characters I think that might be necessary to get through some of the story’s tough subject matter.
I was expecting a heavy read but maybe not quite this heavy. The hopeful note at the end was nice but I was left wondering what I should be taking away aside from how difficult everyone's lives were.
This book left me a little conflicted. In a general technical sense, the writing is beautiful, particularly in the sections in second person, and while there was sort of a feeling of being somehow distanced from the characters I think that might be necessary to get through some of the story’s tough subject matter.
I was expecting a heavy read but maybe not quite this heavy. The hopeful note at the end was nice but I was left wondering what I should be taking away aside from how difficult everyone's lives were.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Violence, Toxic relationship, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Miscarriage, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Death, Dementia, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Gaslighting, Grief, Gun violence, Sexual content, Police brutality, Incest, Infertility, Infidelity, Rape, and Stalking
Minor: Ableism, Abortion, Drug use, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Suicidal thoughts, Trafficking, and Vomit
pollyflorence's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Miscarriage, Murder, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, and Violence
readswithnatalieb's review
dark
emotional
3.5
This story is incredibly hard hitting and emotional to where it has the potential to haunt you long after you’ve read the final page.
The second I finished this audiobook, I will be honest to say I didn’t think I liked it. But after thinking about the story more and more, I did like the story, but perhaps the audiobook wasn’t for me. The story is so dark and emotional, but the narrator is monotone. I struggled with keeping up with the characters and events to where rewinding was necessary.
You will read (or listen) to a lot of depressing and graphic scenes. With how dark this story is, it could be unenjoyable if you’re not one for heavy books. There is a lot going on in this book but ultimately, I found this story shedding light on the domestic violence that women in poverty are susceptible to. Not only does it affect the woman in harm, but it can lead to intergenerational trauma.
Content warnings: murder, death of a child, emotional and physical abuse, rape, infidelity, kidnapping.
If you choose to read this book, I would suggest reading over listening if you’re able. After reading a few reviews, readers mentioned the lyrical poetic style of writing which I know I would have appreciated.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder, Child death, Rape, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Emotional abuse, and Physical abuse
virginiash's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-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
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Emotional abuse, and Murder
serendipitysbooks's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.25
How the One Eyed Sister Sweeps Her House has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and I can certainly see why. The writing and storyline were engaging, drew me in and quickly had me absorbed. The protagonist Lala was a spunky child from a difficult background determined to play by her rules and forge her own path in life, contrary to the good advice and cautionary tales dispensed by her grandmother. Unfortunately for her she chose to get involved with the wrong man, and her life became blighted by violence that she struggled to free herself from. Set in a Barbados resort town this novel highlights its darker side, the one tourists don’t get to see, the one that involves the sale of drugs, addiction, domestic abuse, poverty, violence, sexual assault, crime, murder, corruption, the death of a child and generational abuse. Through Lala we get an excellent insight into the psychology of domestic abuse victims. While Lala was the main character there were several interesting lesser characters including Mira, the former prostitute who married a wealthy visitor and, most heartbreakingly, Tone a sometime accomplice of Lala’s husband who can see the truth of her marriage and who has secretly loved her from childhood. Through their compelling intertwining stories we see that Paradise is anything but for those who live there. It’s a book that was relentlessness grim but also impossible to put down.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Gun violence, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, and Violence
achiunicorn's review
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, and Murder
Moderate: Gun violence, Rape, and Death of parent
Minor: Incest
tamzen's review
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexual violence, Violence, Gun violence, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Murder, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Abortion and Miscarriage
just_one_more_paige's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
A few months into working at my local library, I found the stash of ARCs we’ve been sent that are “free to a good [employee’s] home” and it’s been hard to not grab them all and run, honestly. I try to be judicious about what I take, so that there are options left for other people. Yea, I know, I’m too nice. Haha. Anyways, this one was on the top of the pile right when I first found it and that cover caught my eye like you wouldn’t believe – or maybe you do believe it since the colors are simply gorgeous. And then as I got closer and saw that title, I just couldn’t say no. I judged it, found it worthy, and brought it home with me. Now look – it’s a recent release that’s getting a fair amount of love and I feel so cool for having read it this soon after publication!
This is a story of lives intertwined in Baxter Beach, Barbados. Locals Lala and Adan are expecting a child, but the night Lala goes into labor and leaves their house looking for Adan, she interrupts him in the middle of robbing the nearby home of a well-off ex-pat, causing the home invasion to take a fatal turn. When, weeks later, Lala’s baby is found dead on the beach and Mira Whalen continues to be lost in the grief of her husband’s unsolved murder and Adan’s friend Tone tries to help fix his and Lala’s troubles and Sergeant Beckles follows his gut toward solving these deaths/murders, these characters’ stories unfold together leading to an ever more tragic finale.
Whoa. I honestly can’t believe that this is a debut. The writing is simply stunning. There is a gorgeous cadence to the writing, a lyricism, that you cannot help but fall into as a reader. Beautiful despite the difficulty, and sometimes just straight ugliness, of the topics it’s describing. Also, having listened to the audiobook (thanks Libro.fm!) along with reading the physical, I cannot help but think that the narrator had a great role in the way I interpreted that cadence, because oh my goodness the voice and tone and rise/fall of the narration was simply perfect. Also, the multiple perspectives through which this story is told, each revealing different aspects, small details, and myriad individual interpretations of the same events is done so, so well. The interconnections between the characters were clear and believable (sometimes I gripe with these types of novel formulas because things seem too convenient to be realistic or I’m left with certain holes/questions at the end) and the tiny differences in perception or experience that make each character see what they see, whether it’s the full or accurate truth or not, and the way that ripples out into decisions and consequences across time and lives and events is all phenomenal executed.
As far as the content and themes themselves…also whoa. The list of content warnings for this novel is long, including sexual assault and rape and incest, domestic abuse – physical and mental/emotional, death of a child, violence and violent death and gun violence, miscarriage, murder. But somehow, even though all that happened within these pages, it never seemed like the violence and abuse and death eclipsed the characters themselves. I don’t know how best to describe it, but I want it to be clear that reading this did not feel like reading trauma porn (or whatever the right vocabulary is to describe that). Rather, this novel stayed truly focused on the development of the character’s living through and within and responsible for these events. The portrayal of their lives, which they lived within the circumstances they were handed, circumstances that for many of them were barriers or lacking in opportunity or limited for systemic and cyclical reasons and not reasons within their personal control, was heartrending. Truly. The loss and suffering were…outsized…and each faced time(s) when different decisions could have been made. As a reader, I sure hoped they’d have been made, for the characters’ sakes, for their chance at a potential for a happier/easier outcome. Yet, I can’t say I don’t understand why they weren’t, sometimes not at all and sometimes not until it was too late, and I mourned with and for the characters when they reached the moments when they realized it. Anyways, I am not totally sure I communicated what I wanted to here, but the point is, while these themes are intense and heavy and potentially triggering AF, they were also handled in a way that made them feel like the “setting” and ground-laying details that they were – integral to the plot and the characters, but never the dominant piece. What I am leaving this novel with is a deep sense of these characters and their relationships to each other, centering on Lala and spiraling outwards to include her first meeting and history with Tone, the way she met and married Adan, how she came to be raised by her grandmother, how her story became intertwined with Mira Whalen (who we get to know as well, her own story as an island girl who came to be married to an ex-pat, and her following grief at his loss) and that of Sergeant Beckles. And here and there we are given other, one-off, perspectives of peripheral characters whose certain decisions/actions, unbeknownst to them, create pivotal changes and reverberations in the lives of our main characters. I want to finish with a mention of where things end. A “wrap-up” for each character that, in many cases are tragic line with the rest of the novel, but also seemed right, providing each with a landing place that, whether it’s deserved or unjust, open-ended or permanent, just…fit. Which is always a feat worth admiring.
Jones combines awfully dark themes and gritty realities with expressive writing and detailed, well-paced plot/character advancement in a debut novel that is truly impressive. Although this is not a novel to enter into lightly, it is one that, put simply, is just really good.
“What are secrets but things we want to forget? Why then would be keep the acquaintance of others who remember them?”
“In those tunnels, you understand that you do not learn to love a man, because for the right man there is no need for the learning, the love is the most natural thing in the world. You understand that if you must learn to love a man, he is probably not the man you should be loving.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abortion, Animal death, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Gun violence, Incest, Infertility, Miscarriage, Murder, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, and Violence
booksybochinche's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Grief, Incest, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Toxic relationship
rozereads's review
dark
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? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder, Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Incest, Rape, Physical abuse, Torture, and Toxic relationship