kendrajbean's review

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challenging dark informative sad slow-paced

4.0

pbinterrupted's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

5.0

i attended pat evangelista's book talk about a week after i visited davao for the first time. it was a harrowing experience, getting to read this book after being told by newfound friends down south about how beloved the dutertes were. 

the person next to me told me that i read at a scarily fast pace—three chapters in, only 25 minutes since we were seated. i couldn't help it; the book was hard to put down. 

sometimes i forget that this ever happened, like it's all some sort of fever dream. but it happened. thank you, pat, for reminding me it did.

sophiabarrygordon's review against another edition

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dark informative medium-paced

3.0

sinica's review

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dark

4.75

cwood6's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative fast-paced

5.0

yvonne_aaf's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

Patricia Evangelista. The courage, love, and righteous anger that pours off every page is phenomenal. This is a story of a people and country that the author so clearly loves, and she tells their stories with so much care. Utterly heartbreaking, immensely powerful!

pshah5473's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative medium-paced

4.5

mochiimin_jimin's review against another edition

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informative tense medium-paced

4.0

It was a really interesting read as I wasn't aware of what happened during the War on Drugs but this book made me realize a lot of things. I just think there were some bits that were repetitive and the chapters were kind of long but all in all it was a good read. 

sam8834's review against another edition

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dark informative tense medium-paced

4.0

A journalistic collection of stories accounting state-sanctioned killings of citizens in the Philippines during the Rodrigo Duterte administration's drug war. It is about as yikes as you would imagine the story of any nation on the path to autocracy. Evangelista is also interesting here as a journalist and a self-inserted character in the book. She aims to be somewhat clinical in her reporting of countless murders, yet it is easy to see from the book's outset that working as a reporter on disasters has left a lasting mark on her, especially when it comes to her home country.

cathdm's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

3.0

Interesting subject matter, but I found it dryly written so it was a chore to read. Only finished it because I wanted to know how it all ended.