Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Lucky Girl by Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu

4 reviews

saliwali's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing sad 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? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Racism, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Abortion, Bullying, Dementia, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, and Classism

Moderate: Colonisation, Classism, Suicide, Police brutality, Violence, Fire/Fire injury, and Slavery

Minor: Drug use, Mental illness, Classism, Death of parent, Religious bigotry, Cultural appropriation, and Infertility

rgander's review against another edition

emotional hopeful relaxing 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? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Suicide, Racism, Pregnancy, Infertility, Death, Adult/minor relationship, Dementia, and Sexual assault

mwetzel's review

emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief and Abortion

Moderate: Sexual assault, Terminal illness, Dementia, Death of parent, and Racism

Minor: Suicide and Addiction

goatsrsexy's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring 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? Yes

5.0

Lucky girl is about Soila, who grows up very privileged but extremely sheltered in Kenya, and moves to America for school to get some freedom from her overbearing mother.

She struggles a lot at first to understand the African American experience and relationship to blackness and racism because it's so different from her own African experience. I really admired the way that although she had a hard time understanding where her friends were coming from, she quickly recognized that there were things she didn't understand and that she needed to put in effort to learn and view things through different lenses and let go of her own biases and misconceptions. She struggles with this throughout the book but you can also see her making huge progress with it. As a white Canadian, the difference between the African immigrant and African American experience isn't something I've ever given much thought to and it was super eye opening for me. I definitely feel that I gained a greater understanding of both cultures through Soila.

Soilas struggle with her mother's expectations was portrayed so well, it was so difficult for me to see her hurting herself and giving up things that were important to her in order to make her mother happy, but I was able to understand where she was coming from even though there was a lot I would have done differently. I loved the people in her life. Her aunts, grandma, friends and partners were all so loving and supportive and they all added so many different things to her life.

Lucky Girl deals with so many things in such a short book; racism and colourism, terrorism, sexual assault, grief, and a lot more than that too. It deals with a lot of heavy subjects and I definitely shed a few tears while reading, but it was also such a beautiful and hopeful story I honestly feel privileged to had read it. I can't believe this is the author's debut novel, I definitely can't wait to read more from her in the future. Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief

Moderate: Sexual assault and Racism

Minor: Suicide