Reviews with content warning for Slavery - When the Reckoning Comes

The perfect ghost story. The writing is amazing and it left me completely chilled to the bone, as I’m sure it was intended. This book hit me hard. The horrors that black people have faced in America are unforgivable, and I have no doubt that some of the details in this book are based on fact. Thank you Ms. McQueen for this masterpiece.

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vigil's review against another edition

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adventurous 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

2.0

this book held my attention as i read it, but once i put it down, i had little inclination to pick it up again.

i enjoyed the story, though if you’re looking for a fresh ghost story with twists and turns, this isn’t it. it’s a very classic revenge story and i think it’s strength lies more in it’s themes and how unflinching the author is in her criticism of racism, plantations, and how everyone can play into white supremacy, maliciously or not. my favorite portion of the book is towards the ending

where mira lives through the eyes of one of the slaves, and it uncovers just how horrific slavery really was, and how horrific everyone in the present is for ignoring and exploiting it.

it didn’t quite stick the landing though in my opinion. the latter portion of the book is rather unclear, making it hard to distinguish what fact from fiction and how did some of the more shocking events happen or didn’t happen. this vagueness isn’t bad in and of itself, but it makes the ending even more egregious. all the vague hallucinatory vibes disappear and the book is over because the protagonist literally says it’s over, not because anything is really done. i don’t need the protagonists to stick around and clean up the mess made by racist whites, but what about everything else? it felt like author thought she got her message across sufficiently and forgot about the story. the message it sends is good, but as a book it’s just okay.

also. i found celine’s character to be personally uncomfortable to me as a black person (but all too familiar) but i found the “poor girl dares to try to escape and gets put down like a dog by her partner” portion of the book to be rather distasteful. also a copout, no white person in this book has to personally reckon with anything. they’re either nameless racists, or end up dead.

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ylimeread's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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nchipp's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-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

4.5

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singalana's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad slow-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? No

3.0

I’m feeling conflicted about this book. I wanted to like it more, but it fell a bit short for me. The premise is interesting and important: the main character is invited to her childhood friend’s wedding. The wedding is held at a renovated plantation that has a dark history of slavery.

The book starts slowly, exploring the childhood of our two main characters: Mira and Jesse, and their friend Celine, whose wedding they are now invited to. We get an account of the events that led to Jesse being ostracized and them drifting apart. The events really kick off at the end of the book, when the story turns chilling.

The book explores an important topic of slavery and how that history still affects the lives of black people today. There are some disturbing depictions of what happened to the slaves. Unfortunately, for me, the events got a bit confusing towards the end and I couldn’t keep up with why people did what they did. I wish Mira and Jesse could have been a bit stronger characters, and the relationship between them felt slightly forced.

In conclusion, the topic is extremely important, the main theme of the book was great and the “american gothic” atmosphere was well executed. With a better characterization and a little more thought to the ending this could have been an excellent book.

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readingpicnic's review

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Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

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lindseyas's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious 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? No

4.75

This was another book that I read for my "Literary Hauntings" class. It wasn't like the normal "hauntings" that we'd been reading about, but it was the most realistic, and certainly the most visceral, emotional and raw. The combination of history and the supernatural is the perfect encapsulation of what the gothic really is – our pasts coming back to haunt us. The novel played perfectly into this archetype, with a tense tone and winding suspense keeping it in place. It used gore and mental anguish to create a haunting aura that has lasted with me long since reading.

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cinephilegirl_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad 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 one was a hard thing to pass. But it was dark and raw.

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