Reviews with content warning for Torture - When the Reckoning Comes

Reviews tagging 'Torture'

When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen

56 reviews

driss's review

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challenging dark informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.75

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rorikae's review against another edition

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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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thiszetasajerk's review against another edition

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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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kattyenn's review

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dark tense 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

4.5

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honeycruller's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Overall, I liked the book. I was looking for something similar to Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward so I gave this a go. My only qualm is that there were several points where there was more tell than there was show. There would be a beautiful (and accessible) metaphor, then two paragraphs later it would be spelled out for the reader. I understood it the first time, I don’t need the metaphor explained thank you. There was some very graphic scenes near the end, violence and gore but it’s not unrealistic … humans are awful.

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