Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

22 reviews

apiora215's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious 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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Car accident, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Sexual harassment, Suicide, Child death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Infertility, Sexual violence, Ableism, Alcohol, Body horror, Death, Emotional abuse, Grief, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicide attempt, and Vomit

brookey8888's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

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

2.75

This was fine. I really enjoyed this when it was the court scenes, but other then that I found it incredibly slow and it was more telling then showing. I did find the topic interesting and the different stories weaving together. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Sexual assault, Violence, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Death, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Infidelity, Infertility, and Death of parent

ashleysbookthoughts's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

I’m trying very hard to write a review of this book and not a rant about ableism and misinformation about autism. If you’re interested in that, please DM me, because this book brought up THOUGHTS. This book will be a very difficult read if you have or love someone who has autism. Angie Kim makes it clear that the opinions presented belong to her characters and aren’t her own, but she doesn’t pull punches. So, even though it’s a huge part of this book, I’m not going to talk about autism here. 

Instead, I’ll talk about the excellent pacing, clever plotting, twists and turns, and remarkably complex characters who I simultaneously loved and hated. Miracle Creek is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, an immigrant story, and an attack on the idea of the “Good Mother.” But most of all, it’s a story of consequences. Of how decisions and actions that seem small and inconsequential can cause irreparable damage. 

This book made me angry, tense, scared, sympathetic, and devastated. I don’t know that I loved it, but it kept me up at night and when I wasn’t actively reading it, I thought about it constantly. Thats pretty high praise. 

CW: ableism, murder, fire, fire death, suicide, chronic illness, sexual assault, assault of a minor, child abuse, racism, child death

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Gaslighting, Death, Sexual assault, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Murder, Racism, Suicide, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Medical content, Stalking, Misogyny, Injury/Injury detail, Vomit, Excrement, and Infertility

Minor: Cancer

kleaf's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious 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

1.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Car accident, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Grief, Infertility, Alcohol, Chronic illness, Death, Medical content, Murder, Sexual assault, Suicide, Death of parent, Pedophilia, Terminal illness, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Mental illness, and Rape

annoyedhumanoid's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective 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

5.0

i'm impressed
hot take, i'm not that big a fan of Shakespeare because so many of his plots (at least, his tragedies) are like, if any one thing in this series of unfortunate events had gone differently then we wouldn't be in these tragic circumstances, except the series of unfortunate events is ridiculous and arbitrary. best example: in Hamlet (spoilers), when Hamlet stabs and kills Polonius, who was eavesdropping behind a curtain, because Hamlet thought he heard a rat. that's just undeniably stupid for a major plot point. Miracle Creek has the same concept—if anything had gone differently we could have avoided tragedy—but pulls it off expertly. Shakespeare could never??
could this be considered southern gothic? it's set in Virginia, nearly everyone is a grotesque character, and there's some truly disturbing content, plus themes of racism, sexism, and poverty.
this review has been completely shaped by my English class experience
cover design review: ★★★★½. love the colors, the scenery, and the burn holes, but it starts to feel crowded with the addition of glitter and stars. not a big fan of the typeface, makes me think of Papyrus 😬

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Gaslighting, Infidelity, Medical content, Medical trauma, Ableism, Murder, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Chronic illness, Violence, Adult/minor relationship, Death, Pedophilia, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Child abuse, Infertility, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, and Rape

Moderate: Abandonment, Cursing, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Confinement, Excrement, Alcohol, Blood, Car accident, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Cancer, Forced institutionalization, Bullying, Stalking, and Vomit

savvyrosereads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

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

4.0

First read in 2019; review based on my April ’22 reread!

Rating: 4/5 stars (boosted 0.5 stars from my original rating)

Told through the frame of a murder trial, Miracle Creek is a literary courtroom mystery centered on the fallout from an explosion and fire at “Miracle Submarine,” a hyperbaric oxygen treatment center owned by a Korean immigrant family and primarily catering to children with special needs. The mother of one of the patients stands accused of murdering her son…but everyone has secrets, and the trial just may reveal them all.

I generally shy away from courtroom thrillers because, frankly, they’re rarely well-done or realistic, and, as a lawyer, they can be downright painful to read. Fortunately, Miracle Creek is written by a former trial attorney, and the courtroom scenes are realistic, riveting, and the absolute best I’ve come across in a book to date. This second read managed to impress me even more, because the many heartbreaking but beautiful moments of the narrative really shone through on a reread, including insights into the immigrant experience, parenthood, and surviving trauma.

I want to flag that this is by no means an easy read, and you should absolutely check content warnings before diving in. But it is memorable and beautifully written, and I’m so glad I read it twice.

Recommended to anyone, but especially if you like: courtroom dramas; first generation immigrant stories; literary thrillers.

CW: Ableism; child abuse; child death; murder; fire/fire injury; sexual assault, suicide.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Grief, Infertility, Infidelity, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicide, Violence, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Ableism, and Adult/minor relationship

missbear's review against another edition

mysterious tense fast-paced

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

2.75

I'll preface this by saying that this kind of courtroom thriller is not my preferred genre - it's not that I don't enjoy them at all, but that I rarely find them memorable enough or personally appealing enough to rate them more than 3 stars.  So essentially, by my standards for this genre, Miracle Creek was a quite enjoyable example for me. 

I found Miracle Creek to be pretty compulsively readable (and I was reading it alongside Man's Search for Meaning, which though short, is a bit dense, so it was an enjoyable diversion.) I read a bit more about Angie Kim after reading this book and I learned that she had firsthand experience with many of the elements of this story (the HBOT treatment, being a parent to a child suffering from a longterm illness, being an immigrant to America).  I think her experience, passion, and familiarity with the topics really did come through in her writing to good effect. 

My main issue is that I am not particularly fond of a particular trope seemingly common in mystery/thriller novels, where the story is told from the perspective of characters who "keep secrets" from the reader.  I don't mean unreliable narrators, exactly, because in this case the characters are not narrators - it's just that we're in their heads, being told their feelings and thoughts, except for certain key feelings and thoughts that would reveal the mystery.  It just bothers me, though I will happily concede that this was not as egregious a problem in Miracle Creek as it has been in some other similar books I've read (like Jodi Picoult's novels).  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Child death, Child abuse, Chronic illness, and Adult/minor relationship

Moderate: Suicide

cryptogay's review against another edition

challenging reflective 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? Yes

2.0

This is a hard one. I didn't really know what this book was about when I checked it out, I'd just heard it was good so I thought I'd give it a try. If I had known, I probably wouldn't have read it, as I generally give anything about autism not written by autistic authors a pass.
Miracle Creek covers a lot of complicated territory. Much of this concerns the experimental medical treatments used on disabled children, especially autistic children. I don't think it handles this aspect of its story very well. A group of protesters against the medicalization of autism are portrayed as unpleasant, invasive, and aggressive. The parents of the autistic children directly involved in the story are written about with compassion despite one of them being revealed to be seriously physically and emotionally abusive to her son, even without getting into the various therapies she sends him to in attempts to "cure" his autism. In contrast, the autistic characters are never really given a voice. Yes, the two featured in the book are children, but autistic adults exist, and quite frankly make up the majority of the movements against the abusive "therapies" that are used on autistic people, primarily children. The fact that no autistic adults ever appear, and the two characters who actually openly speak about these treatments as abuse barely appear and are largely discredited, these things tilt the book towards endorsing this abuse, or at least parts of it. I don't know what Kim's intentions or feelings were with regard to this aspect of the story, but it really wasn't handled well. 
Autism isn't a disease or an illness, its a brain structure, and it varies from person to person. It is not something that can be "cured", and it is not caused by vaccines. The therapies that claim to cure or treat autism vary from complete bunk to abuse and manipulation, and acting like they aren't these things is harmful to the children forced to undergo them. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Death, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Grief, Medical content, Murder, Racism, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Car accident, Confinement, Excrement, Infertility, Physical abuse, Stalking, Violence, Suicide, and Suicidal thoughts

adriennne's review against another edition

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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Chronic illness, Violence, Adult/minor relationship, and Rape

Moderate: Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Xenophobia

Minor: Car accident

gloriazthompson's review against another edition

emotional fast-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? No

4.25

4.25. Really enjoyed this one. I liked the cast of characters and how to events unfolded.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Death, and Infertility

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Terminal illness, Rape, Racial slurs, Murder, Mental illness, and Infidelity