Reviews with content warning for Slavery - When the Reckoning Comes

Reviews tagging 'Slavery'

When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen

118 reviews

rorikae's review against another edition

challenging dark 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
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

'When the Reckoning Comes' by LaTanya McQueen is a haunting story about the echoes of ghosts of the past.
When she was young, Mira and her friend Jesse encountered something haunting in the old, rundown plantation in their town. Though they both got out alive, that experience has haunted them both and sent them on different trajectories. Mira has left the town, gone to college, and now has a full time job. She thinks she's fully escaped her past but then she receives a call from her childhood friend Celine. Celine is getting married at the same plantation from Mira's youth, which has now been restored and acts as a tourist attraction. With Celine's insistence, Mira agrees to come home for the wedding, seeking to get to the bottom of what happened that day in her youth and to potentially see Jesse again.
McQueen does an exceptional job of creating a haunting atmosphere that slowly ramps up throughout the course of the book. These horrors are all based on true events but with an added dash of paranormal. There were moments in this book that were hard, but necessary, to read as McQueen makes the reader confront the true horrors of slavery. One of the most effective aspects of this story is the melding of the past and present day elements. Mira is a great main character who is easy to care for while also being a complex person. I will be interested to see what McQueen writes next as it is clear she is great at creating atmosphere and melding horrors of the past and present to create an engaging narrative.

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sofipitch's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

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

3.75

Good concept and horrifying story, the main issue with this book is pacing and how quickly everything is explained/thematic sock puppet syndrome

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_kristinsworld's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.0

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thiszetasajerk's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

I didn’t like how the ending played out. I felt like it was unfair that the black woman was the one who was truly subjected to the whores of slavery. Meanwhile, the white people who, needed to do the most learning, got off easy. I don’t like that most of the gruesome details were done to the African-American characters, and when it came time for the white characters to experience death, all but one, was relatively quick.

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lvd92's review

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-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

4.75

This book was such a strong work. Honestly, it was so raw, so human, so honest. However, I would not widely recommend it. This book deals with some very heavy topics, and one needs to be in a state of mind in which that can be dealt with healthily. Don't go in expecting a ghostly horror book with jump scares, etc. This is a horror book in the sense that it deals with some of the worst things white people have done to black people in the time of slavery, the lingering racism towards black people, and attempts at whitewashing how monstrous people were and still can be against those we deem other. It is such an important topic, such a vital lesson, particularly as some of us still appear to find it very hard to learn to know and do better.

As for my review of the actual book - In my opinion, this is a really strong work. The writing style worked very well for me; no purple prose, but just a very natural flow of invocative phrasing. The author uses flashbacks here and there, which I think were handled well. I love how skilled the author took us into Mira's experiences, not always knowing what she saw. The characters were very well-developed, too. I'd say that the author was pretty successful in developing particularly Mira, Celine and Jesse into complex and flawed but likeable characters. The plot may have had some pacing issues here and there, but I did not mind the slow parts. They helped me connect more with the characters and process some of the darker occurrences in the plot, and their real-life underlying inspiration. Just really solid.

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starbabe2529's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense 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? It's complicated

4.0

This was presented to me as a horror book and I would somewhat disagree with that. While there were many horrifying things that happened and there were ghosts it didn't feel like it was meant to be horror. It seemed more like a work of literary fiction that focused on the horrifying lives of slaves and the long standing institutions of slavery that still dictate our modern life and especially the lives of people of color in our country. It is a very important book and it was incredibly written. But I do not think I would consider this horror in the same way I would not consider Toni Morrison or Alice Sebold horror despite the horrors those authors write about. Overall I think it was well done, intense, and a stark look at the lives of people of color today and in the past. It made me uncomfortable in the way it seems it was intended to and made me think. Overall I give this a 7 out of 10 because while it was well written I did not have fun reading it and I did not get the horror story I was expecting.

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