Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

43 reviews

kayceeisbookish's review against another edition

dark funny mysterious tense slow-paced

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

5.0

A unique murder mystery with a dark humor twist. I highly enjoyed the melancholy narrator's tone as he uncoiled the web of knotted lies that started out as a standard family reunion.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Addiction, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Infertility, Suicide, Blood, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail

beepbeep101's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

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

4.25

“Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.” 

Fantastic. Twists all the way to the last page. The extra .25 is for the last quarter of the book or so, as so much happened right after each other that beautifully brought everything together and turned things on their head. I loved the narrative voice of Ern (who isn’t a crime writer but instead is a how-to-be-a-crime-writer writer), who recounts the book’s events with a sense of humor about the writing process. He even gives the page numbers at the beginning on which every death in the book will occur - something which sounds like it would spoil a great deal, but things often happen differently than you expect them to. 

A great read, though definitely check the content warnings, as it wasn’t quite as light as I expected it to be from word of mouth recommendations. It gets into revenge, PTSD, infidelity, infertility, and addiction, and descriptions of trauma and injuries were a bit heavier than I expected. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Torture, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Child death, Confinement, Drug use, Infertility, Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, and Abandonment

Minor: Alcoholism, Vomit, Car accident, and Alcohol

daniellekat's review against another edition

adventurous funny mysterious fast-paced

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

4.75

This was so fun and exciting. The pacing moved well and I liked the unique structure of the having the "author" speak directly to the reader. There were times where the plot got a bit confusing, but I think it helped that I read this over a very short period of time. The writing was witty and easy to follow but

the whole bit with Ernest's hand made no sense. There is no way he would have be able to do as much as he did given how much damage there was.

Overall, I was invested in this from the start and while the big reveal didn't shock me there were points that had me guessing throughout. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Child death, Infidelity, Suicide, Death of parent, and Abandonment

Minor: Addiction, Blood, Vomit, Car accident, and Alcohol

alliluh's review against another edition

funny slow-paced

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

4.0

fun

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infertility and Murder

Moderate: Addiction, Child death, Drug abuse, Infidelity, Suicide, and Abandonment

chaoticenby's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny mysterious medium-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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Kidnapping, and Murder

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child death, Drug abuse, Suicide, and Torture

Minor: Abandonment

tlholmes's review against another edition

dark emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Death of parent, and Murder

Moderate: Abandonment

heather_harrison's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

 "I've never heard of someone witnessing a murder and having to wait for a McMuffin"

This is a book where the narrator is telling you a murder mystery while also writing a book about how to write a murder mystery - and it gives the murder mystery a nice spin. 

The Cunninghams are spending a weekend at a ski resort as a family reunion. But it's sure to be an interesting reunion as our protagonist Ernie hasn't seen his big brother since he testified to have him put in jail. They all have a pretty colourful past and the further you delve into the mystery the more you start to learn about those skeletons in closest. 

This is almost like a combination of Knives Out and Underbelly. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death of parent, Murder, and Abandonment

Minor: Drug abuse, Gun violence, Suicide, Violence, and Grief

jessgj's review against another edition

emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.5

Okay, so for anyone who looked at this and thought "FAMILY OF ASSASSINS!", sorry, this isn't that book. Instead, the book starts off with the eventful encounter when our protagonist and narrator Ern gets a call from his brother in the middle of the night, needing his help to dispose of a body. That's the start of the book but definitely not the start of their story. Slowly, we get around to how in fact, everyone in Ernest's family has killed someone, although "Killed" has some looser means than we initially think. 

The book took a little while to really get started for me. Fortunately, I was listening to the audiobook and I quite liked the narrator, both the voice actor and Ernest. Ernest breaks the fourth wall quite often but not in an obnoxious way that I've seen other people do and I appreciate his efforts to be honest to the readers. It's definitely a book that rewards its reader for paying attention as I was able to keep up with the big reveal and didn't feel cheated. 4.5 stars for me

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Police brutality

Moderate: Child death, Gun violence, Infertility, Infidelity, Blood, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, and Abandonment

Minor: Vomit and Kidnapping

bubblehead_1994's review against another edition

adventurous funny mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Addiction, Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Suicide, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Murder, and Abandonment

emilywemily6's review against another edition

dark funny mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

I enjoyed this book! Though the humor is definitely more slapstick/punchline than my personal humor. This book is also extremely self aware (the narrator is one of the family members telling the story) and refers to the editor, specific word choices as the writer, etc. There were also lots of page numbers mentioned (to foreshadow when people die or when certain cryptic events happen, to look back on previous happenings and add more clarity to them, etc.) which was fun and different. I kept flipping back and forth to double check things and to see when the next mention of death was. So this was a fun read, even if the style was not the perfect fit for me and took a little bit to really get into it. My biggest gripes are that some of the evidence reveals were really hard to understand even if I kept rereading them, and the flow of information was sometimes hard to follow as a result of all the time hopping. The narrator told the truth as he knew it to be at the time things happened, but he didn’t have a perfect knowledge and that muddied the waters too. The plot twist at the very end of the book did me in and left me with more questions than the original plot of the story unfortunately. But I enjoyed this book and I liked how different it was from other books I’ve read. The subtle commentary on killing versus murder was an interesting aside as well (because as the readers we are also biased by how we read into words). I will look forward to reading other things by this author.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Suicide, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Child death, Kidnapping, and Abandonment

Minor: Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Car accident, and Alcohol