Reviews tagging 'Death'

アーモンド by Won-pyung Sohn

332 reviews

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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emotional reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Where should I start?
This book is full of emotions. I felt all kind of emotions, from sadness to happiness, from feeling injustice to justice, since anger to calmness... This book makes you feel things, remembering how much human you actually are.
Plus, it has friendship as one of the main topics: what can a friendship do for you? To what extent can a friendship change the way you percieve the world around you?
Besides, I really like the commentary on what it is to be a "normal person" nowadays. 

This book will be forever in my heart. I don't remember reading a book as enthusiastically as I read this one. 
I recommend this book to everyone.

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dark hopeful sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Quick read — finished this in just a few days. It was a story unlike any I’ve ever read — about two boys; one who feels too much, and one who feels nothing at all, born with a brain condition called alexithymia, which in medical terms means “inability to identify and describe emotions experienced by one’s self or others”.

While it’s not necessarily a book I’d recommend, I did find value in reading it — especially with the author’s point in showcasing children who are different from parents’ expectations and that kids who don’t meet those expectations deserve love and opportunities and acceptance. 

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Un libro lleno de esperanza y empatía

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emotional reflective medium-paced

It’s not every day you read a book from the perspective of an individual—more specifically, a boy—with Alexithymia. (Then again, it’s not every day you come across such a trait in a book either.) The protagonist, Yunjae, has such a distinct voice that’s frank and detached, but in some ways, curious, that occasionally makes you pause to think about why we do and think the things we do.

There were a couple things that threw me off about this book, though. The main one is that I’m not a huge fan of the overcoming narrative, especially when it’s as neatly packaged as the one you’ll find in this novel. It’s not that I want characters to suffer, but I also think this constant strive for normalcy is a problematic one, so it was a little disappointing to see how things wrapped up. I also can’t tell if this is just the result of the translation, but I felt the dialogue between characters were really awkward, and I couldn’t really make head or tails of the nuances of their relationships. Korean having degrees of formality in the language is really hard to translate, so I don’t entirely fault the translator for this, but I think there could have been a way to navigate this a bit better.

Almond
is worth reading, especially because it is told from a unique perspective. However, I didn’t find this as heartwarming and enjoyable as others seem to have found it, but that’s likely because I wasn’t the biggest fan of how things ended.


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emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Did not expect to cry, but I did. You could tell a lot of plot points in there were for the shock factor and to make it edgy, but given that the protagonist can’t exactly feel anything, I understand how the author felt the scenes were necessary. It was an easy read, too! I kept wanting to know what happened next after I finished each (short) chapter.

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dark emotional reflective 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: Yes

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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