Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester by Maya MacGregor

1 review

sarah984's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious slow-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? No

1.5

I feel terrible giving this book such a low rating but I didn't like it at all. 

I will say first off that I really liked Sam's relationship with their dad, and the way that emotions are described  being interpreted through facial expressions and the general autistic point of view. 

Every character that wasn't Sam or their dad was pretty one-note, though. I kept forgetting about Sky even though he was part of the core friend group, and it took me like half the book to realize Aidan and Dylan were two different guys. There were two different characters whose entire personality was "mean girl". The slang is really embarrassing (stop saying emoji!) and the constant brand name and meme references are already dated.

The mystery was also just really bad. The perpetrator is pretty easy to guess

because it's the one adult with zero redeeming qualities.

The author also seems to want to write a book where true crime sleuths save the day while acknowledging how damaging and ghoulish true crime superfans can be and that did not work for me. The way everything worked out comes across as "digging at old wounds and invading peoples' privacy is bad unless I do it."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Hate crime and Panic attacks/disorders

Moderate: Biphobia, Bullying, Death, Child death, Stalking, Ableism, Alcohol, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Murder, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, and Transphobia

Minor: Police brutality, Toxic friendship, Racism, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Cancer, Death of parent, Chronic illness, Cursing, and Child abuse