Reviews with content warning for Infertility - Miracle Creek

Reviews tagging 'Infertility'

pollyflorence's review

Go to review page

dark emotional informative reflective 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

Content Warnings

ashleysbookthoughts's review

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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

4.0

I’m trying very hard to write a review of this book and not a rant about ableism and misinformation about autism. If you’re interested in that, please DM me, because this book brought up THOUGHTS. This book will be a very difficult read if you have or love someone who has autism. Angie Kim makes it clear that the opinions presented belong to her characters and aren’t her own, but she doesn’t pull punches. So, even though it’s a huge part of this book, I’m not going to talk about autism here.

Instead, I’ll talk about the excellent pacing, clever plotting, twists and turns, and remarkably complex characters who I simultaneously loved and hated. Miracle Creek is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, an immigrant story, and an attack on the idea of the “Good Mother.” But most of all, it’s a story of consequences. Of how decisions and actions that seem small and inconsequential can cause irreparable damage.

This book made me angry, tense, scared, sympathetic, and devastated. I don’t know that I loved it, but it kept me up at night and when I wasn’t actively reading it, I thought about it constantly. Thats pretty high praise.

CW: ableism, murder, fire, fire death, suicide, chronic illness, sexual assault, assault of a minor, child abuse, racism, child death

Content Warnings

zamzamzebra's review

Go to review page

emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

2.75

Content Warnings

kleaf's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

1.0

Content Warnings

maria1085's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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

3.75

A town in Virginia is rocked by an explosion at an experimental treatment facility. A story that is filled with secrets, lies, betrayals, and murder trial, be prepared for a roller coaster ride as you try to figure out who the culprit is. All of our choices have consequences, and can have far reaching effects.

Liked:
- the courtroom drama aspect
- The mystery that kept me guessing at who was behind the explosion
- The different storylines and how they were interconnected
- All the secrets, and some that will change the course of things once they are revealed
- How each chapter featured a different character’s perspective
- Strong character development

⚠️This book is very trigger heavy. Infertility, murder, special needs, controversial treatment, sexual assault, treatment of immigrants.

Disliked:
-At the beginning it was confusing with such a full cast of characters
-The controversial treatment of children with autism. Having worked with the special needs community that part was particularly difficult for me

My book club chose this for March and we were very split on this one. It made for great discussion though. A couple of DNFs, some of us really liked it, and a couple finished but didn’t love it. Overall a great debut book!

#bookstagram #bookclub #bookreview #booknerd #lovetoread #momsthatread

Content Warnings

meisqr's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional mysterious tense slow-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? Yes

3.5

"Tragedies don't inoculate you against further tragedies, and misfortune doesn't get sprinked out in far proportions; bad things get hurled at you in clumps and batches, unmanageable and messy."

Miracle Creek focuses on the point-of-views of the people that that were somehow, in some way, involved in tbe tragic accident that caused the death of a mother and a child.

At its core, Miracle Creek was quite hard to read. It was hard because of its realistic qualities; it made you forget that this was fiction. Each character's problems were open and bare, for every reader to see. Their flaws and their challenges, leading up to the tragedy, and even the trauma that they kept with them after it. They all suffered in one way or another, and it was hard to read a piece of fiction that was so real in its portrayal of characters. It showed the difficulties the parents go through, how a teenager coped with being forced into a new life, and how every decision and lie snowballed into the tragedy.

The hardest parts to read would be those of the mothers' perspectives, because it lets you in their mind. How they are just as human as we all are, that they too have doubts in their mind, but it doesn't ever mean that they hadn't loved us at all. That, although they loved their children and had wished them to have been born normal, or remained the way they were, they still loved them to their very core.

I cannot comment much on the autism aspect of the book as I am not that knowledgeable in that area, but I had hoped that there was more to the kids than what was portrayed. I wish there was a better way to tackle the "autism has to be cured" ideology kind of thing.

Content Warnings

annoyedhumanoid's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

5.0

i'm impressed
hot take, i'm not that big a fan of Shakespeare because so many of his plots (at least, his tragedies) are like, if any one thing in this series of unfortunate events had gone differently then we wouldn't be in these tragic circumstances, except the series of unfortunate events is ridiculous and arbitrary. best example: in Hamlet (spoilers), when Hamlet stabs and kills Polonius, who was eavesdropping behind a curtain, because Hamlet thought he heard a rat. that's just undeniably stupid for a major plot point. Miracle Creek has the same concept—if anything had gone differently we could have avoided tragedy—but pulls it off expertly. Shakespeare could never??
could this be considered southern gothic? it's set in Virginia, nearly everyone is a grotesque character, and there's some truly disturbing content, plus themes of racism, sexism, and poverty.
this review has been completely shaped by my English class experience
cover design review: ★★★★½. love the colors, the scenery, and the burn holes, but it starts to feel crowded with the addition of glitter and stars. not a big fan of the typeface, makes me think of Papyrus 😬

Content Warnings

savvyrosereads's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

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

4.0

First read in 2019; review based on my April ’22 reread!

Rating: 4/5 stars (boosted 0.5 stars from my original rating)

Told through the frame of a murder trial, Miracle Creek is a literary courtroom mystery centered on the fallout from an explosion and fire at “Miracle Submarine,” a hyperbaric oxygen treatment center owned by a Korean immigrant family and primarily catering to children with special needs. The mother of one of the patients stands accused of murdering her son…but everyone has secrets, and the trial just may reveal them all.

I generally shy away from courtroom thrillers because, frankly, they’re rarely well-done or realistic, and, as a lawyer, they can be downright painful to read. Fortunately, Miracle Creek is written by a former trial attorney, and the courtroom scenes are realistic, riveting, and the absolute best I’ve come across in a book to date. This second read managed to impress me even more, because the many heartbreaking but beautiful moments of the narrative really shone through on a reread, including insights into the immigrant experience, parenthood, and surviving trauma.

I want to flag that this is by no means an easy read, and you should absolutely check content warnings before diving in. But it is memorable and beautifully written, and I’m so glad I read it twice.

Recommended to anyone, but especially if you like: courtroom dramas; first generation immigrant stories; literary thrillers.

CW: Ableism; child abuse; child death; murder; fire/fire injury; sexual assault, suicide.

Content Warnings