Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook

10 reviews

pippling's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

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

4.25

This novel felt like an epic adventure. A story set in a not-too-unrealistic future where the world is too full, too polluted, there are no more trees, and wildlife is gone for good - apart from in the last Wilderness. The story is told from two perspectives; a mother who has brought her daughter to The Wilderness in a last ditch attempt to save her life, and her daughter who, after growing up in the Wilderness has a complicated relationship with her mother and her companions, but to whom the Wilderness is home. 
The ending was quite bleak and it felt a bit rushed. I felt like there was room for a lot more story there, but I flew through the final chapters and found it exhilarating nonetheless!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Animal death, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Medical trauma, and Miscarriage

solanum's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death of parent, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Pregnancy, Sexual content, Abandonment, Miscarriage, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, and Infidelity

caseythereader's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Abandonment, Miscarriage, Blood, Child death, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Grief, Death, Death of parent, and Infidelity

Moderate: Sexual content and Pregnancy

acline's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark sad tense medium-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? It's complicated

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment

Moderate: Miscarriage

rachaelwho's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

Felt extremely long. I kept thinking it was nearly over. I found it exceptionally bleak.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Infidelity, Terminal illness, Abandonment, Child death, Death, Miscarriage, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Toxic relationship, Blood, Ableism, Animal cruelty, Death of parent, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Sexual content

Hunting, survival sex

ginzura's review against another edition

started off promising, but I just was reading a lot of the same things, a literal regurgitation of things that have happened already. They walk around and just.. kept walking. The one character I had vague interest in was Agnes, but that’s beginning to fizzle out. I’ve lost my motivation to continue. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Sexual content, and Miscarriage

Moderate: Abandonment, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Emotional abuse, and Death of parent

orireading's review

adventurous challenging emotional reflective sad 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

5.0

So deeply beautiful. Only wish I could read it again for the first time. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Sexual content, Death, and Miscarriage

Moderate: Abandonment

Oh my god. This book. I loved this book. It was so beautiful. It made me fall more in love with speculative fiction.

merle_bookdragon's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.25

Hm, so I am still not entirely sure what I thought of this book. I chose this book as part of my master thesis corpus and the premise sounded really interesting. I still think that the concept of the book is a good basis to explore family relationships under specific circumstances, I just think parts of the book were simply not my style.

The book is divided into 7 parts and it started out really well until around parts 5 and 6 where it took a bit of a downward spiral. I do not want to spoiler too much but I think was mostly bothered me that nothing was explained, not even at the very end. There is no explanation as to what the state of the world is to make living in it so horrible except for "there is a lot of smog" but that's nothing new. Additionally, between time jumps, especially one character changes their personality quite a bit, which could have been explained. Without any explanation, I started to instantly dislike them and kept wondering what the hell had happened at this time. I understand that keeping readers in the dark is a common tactic but without any resolve, in the end, it is simply unsatisfying. For example, as a second book for my MA, I read The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He. In this book, I was also very confused for a long time because a lot of information is withheld from the reader for a long time. But in the end, you still receive an explanation, which might not make you like the story or the characters more but at least you learn about a motive. That was really missing in The New Wilderness.

Also, this is really just personal preference but

all that very vigorous and animalistic fucking around the campfire really did nothing for this story. It just made me skip over those parts and grow more annoyed with all the characters for some reason. Oh well.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Animal death, Abandonment, Blood, Death, Sexual content, and Miscarriage

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Death of parent, and Grief

maddiebusick's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-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

4.25

Really interesting and compelling concept. It lagged a bit at times but I guess that reflects the way these characters were living. I enjoyed the fact that this was an environmental warning of a novel without being set in space.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Animal death, Blood, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Murder, Sexual content, and Violence

ruthie_'s review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• 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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Miscarriage

Moderate: Abandonment, Animal death, Blood, Bullying, Death of parent, Grief, Pregnancy, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Violence