Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He

21 reviews

nyoom's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

0.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Blood, Body horror, Cancer, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Medical content, Mental illness, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Sexual content, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Violence, Vomit, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Abandonment, Colonisation, and Gun violence

Minor: Ableism, Bullying, Excrement, and Racism

beautifulpaxielreads's review against another edition

challenging hopeful mysterious reflective 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Death, Child death, Chronic illness, Cursing, Grief, Medical content, Medical trauma, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, and Violence

Moderate: Abandonment, Blood, Colonisation, Murder, and Xenophobia

Minor: Body horror, Racism, and Sexual content

escapinginpaper's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• 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

I have mixed feelings about this one. I wanted to like it, but it was difficult to read.

This is a very futuristic world, where the Earth is ravaged from climate change, making the backdrop for two sisters with a close bond – one of whom is stuck on a desert island, and the other is trying to cope with the the idea her sister is missing, presumed dead. There is a really killer twist at around the 60% mark – I enjoyed that. I had difficulty with the writing style, mostly. Throughout it I kept finding myself thinking "what the heck is going on???" and had to read several passages multiple times to fully understand. A lot of the plot is revealed as you go – very little is "told" to you, you have to glean as you read. 

Overall I'm glad I read it. Despite being difficult, it was interesting and had a very Black Mirror vibe – in fact I think it would translate over really well to film.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Death of parent, Grief, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Blood, Confinement, Medical content, Mental illness, and Sexual content

Minor: Alcohol and Drug use

celia_haz's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Medical content and Toxic relationship

Minor: Suicidal thoughts

starccato's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Terminal illness, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Medical content, Murder, Physical abuse, and Violence

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, and Vomit

caseythereader's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad slow-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

4.0

Thanks to Books Forward PR for the free advance copy of this book. 

- THE ONES WE'RE MEANT TO FIND is a beautiful, big sci-fi story about family and humanity that went places I didn't expect and took turns I didn't see coming.
- I can't discuss too many details without giving things away, but it's one of those books where when the perspective switches you're both not ready to leave the character you're with and excited to get back to the other one. Cee and Kay are both so compelling in diametrically opposed ways.
- The author wrote such an incredible sense of unease into every page, and yet I could not stop reading.
- Basically, I need everyone to read this and to report back to me when things get twisty. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Medical content, Murder, Sexual content, Suicide, Terminal illness, and Violence

erinsbookshelves's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Terminal illness, Blood, Violence, Grief, Suicide, and Death of parent

Moderate: Vomit and Medical content

masscarponay's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Mental illness

Minor: Medical content and Violence

emerynmader's review against another edition

challenging emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

When Joan He (Author of Descendant of the Crane, 2019) announced her second novel, I was incredibly excited. I had loved her first book and was very curious to discover what else she had in store, how her writing would potentially have evolved in the meantime and with another project. The more details came out, the more my excitement grew: science-fiction (new genre!), seperated siblings (I had loved the sibling relationships in DotC!), climate change, a beautiful cover, great and intriguing quotes... Time went on and on and I could wait less and less to finally get my hands on this story and read it. Needless to say, my expectations were high.

Spoiler alert: This book really did NOT disappoint.

Review:

TOWMTF is told from two perspectives, Cee and Kasey. Before reading the book, I expected to have a strong preference for either of them, since this is what happened with previous books which had this sort of structure. Now that I have actually finished the story, however, I can say that I love both Kasey and Cee. They are a perfect fit to the story without feeling mechanical (which often makes me stop reading and instead think about different ways the author could have approached or resolved a certain plot point). In this case, however, they come across as organic to their place in the story, being affected by and in return affecting the plot in a way I cannot imagine how it could have been done differently, both while reading and in hindsight. With this book and its cast, He managed to create not only characters, but people.

Both the protagonists and all the secondary/supporting characters are perfect for this story and add something necessary to it. Even the ones that are missing are missing in the right place, filling the emptiness with the negative space of their absence.

Thanks to the fantastic groundwork laid by the existence of these fantastic characters, the relationships between everyone takes this book to a new level. Even when the two sisters are separated, the reader (or at least I) gets a clear image of what the relationship between them is like and even the minor dynamics with and between characters that get less page time are clear and really add to the story. It is difficult to create the image of a full history and its evolution in a single book, especially considering the hurdles set up by the premise and the plot alone. TOWMTF passes this test (if one wants to call it that) with flying colours and allows both the story and everything related to it to come alive in the process.

For those who have already read He's first book Descendant of the Crane, it might come as no surprise that TOWMTF also has at least one big plot twist - which might or might not take you aback when it is finally revealed. To me personally, it was not unexpected, I actually guessed it rather early on, but the beauty of the book lies not in the surprise, but in the anticipation of how the story develops and evolves from the beginning to reach said twist. To me, this only added to the reading experience. However, if one doesn't guess the plot twists or revelations, I expect they're in for a pretty wild ride - and might want to re-read the book immediately to see what they first missed and it will absolutely be worth it.

Last but not least, He manages to touch upon and address important and heavy topics in TOWMTF, the most striking likely climate change and its grave and lasting consequences. It does this without offering either an eternal solution or a total doomsday vision but instead functions like a warning of the consequences our current path will have on a global scale, while not shying away from the role and relevance of social classes, privileges and the role communities, self-perception and habits very much ingrained in our current daily lives (could) play in such a scenario. Some things are too large to be resolved or really tackled in a single book (even if it is such a dense one as TOWMTF) but that doesn't mean they're not there or can be ignored and He managed to hit just the right balance of addressing these topics without letting them take over the central story, instead weaving them into the tapestry of the plot as needed to bring the story forward and not afraid to leave some things for the reader to ponder over after they've read the last page.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Suicide

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Blood, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Drug use, Grief, Medical content, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Violence, and Vomit

Minor: Cancer, Car accident, Medical content, Murder, Racism, and Sexual content

ceilidhwilliams's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, Death of parent, Grief, and Terminal illness

Minor: Child death, Drug use, Genocide, Medical content, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, and Violence