Reviews with content warning for Blood - Sirotčinec slečny Peregrinové pro podivné děti

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Sirotčinec slečny Peregrinové pro podivné děti by Bronislava Grygová, Ransom Riggs

42 reviews

gnpunpun's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-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

4.0

Nostalgic

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gentle_garbage_baby's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious 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

2.5

It was fine - didn't enthral me or anything. The photographs were a nice addition though.

Also Jacob getting with Emma? Super weird considering she legit dated his grandad.

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blairwatson's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

1.5

This book is an absolute disaster.
Vibe
It started off quite good, with a mysterious vibe (not sth I’d read personally but I’m looking for sth new and I can understand how ppl can like this book).

I really like how things were described when Jacob found his granddad dead in the woods.

It’s really spooky and I like it. But from then on to near the ending, it completely lost that vibe and it went all cheerful and colorful. The ending was a little darker but it didn’t live up to the vibe at the beginning.
Plot and world building
The plot is quite questionable and the pace is inconsistent
Characters
Jacob
I first thought he was a man in his late 20s even tho he’s 15. The way he thinks and acts and talks is not how teenagers usually talk. I’m aware that some teenagers are more serious/mature than others but he isn’t that.
He then went on to

Date his granddad’s ex and snogged her even tho he knows it’s practically incest

He’s quite thick for someone who is supposed to be smart. His plans are really poorly thought out and he really has no other talent than

seeing monsters

Emma
I do not like her at all. She’s 88. I know that she’s in this time loop thingy but she just continued to date her ex’s grandson which is just weird and their relationship seems really toxic too.

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hoagie's review against another edition

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4.0

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moody_gobling's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

2.75

One last read for 2023. I found this book easily digestible, light on horror, big on magical realism. I’m glad I was able to read this book, as it seemed to have been quite popular at its release, but nothing jumped out at me as “remarkable”. The reveal of the main big bad at the end was nice, if not subdued. The MC is just shy of having “chosen one” syndrome. The characters had a charm to them that I think TJ Clune has done better in later works. If you are a fan of lost-boys, time travel, WW2 and teenage boys not feeling heard, this one is for you.

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bookishbutterfly's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

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erebus53's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.75

I tried to pick up a copy of this one as a graphic novel, as it was listed as on the shelves (at Christchurch South Library), but an unhelpful librarian refuse to help me track it down after I had flipped through everything on the shelves and come up wanting.. so I threw up my arms in agitation and just downloaded the audiobook. It was probably a wise decision in the long run.

The story focuses on a teen who is brought up in Florida and who has a close relationship with his Jewish grandfather who survived WWII. The man tells him fanciful stories and and shows him photographs of a children's home where he was raised with kids with special powers. The photographs look fake and a bit dodgy, so nobody believes his stories of special powers and monsters, assuming that they are the mentally divergent accommodations of a traumatised holocaust survivor. As the old man gets increasingly paranoid and the family are considering putting him in a care facility, his grandson goes to check on him, only to find that one of the monsters has got him.

Once his therapist okays the trip, he follows a set of clues in his grandfather's last words, and he travels with his father to a remote island in the UK where his father wishes to observe the local birdlife. There he puts together a puzzle that brings him into contact with people his grandfather once knew, and entangles him in further adventure.

Being set in Florida I notice that there is quite a bit of narrative about the treatment of the elderly. There is a focus on listening to the opinions of older people, and the ways that they are treated in society (there are a lot of rest homes and retirees in Florida, so this follows). I also encountered the term "lenai" for the first time. Intuiting that it was a type of verandah, I looked it up and realised that this common feature of houses in tropical climes was not unknown to me.. my Uncle has one similar to the pictures that I see in an internet web-search, and he lives in Australia.

The story is interesting, deals with alternate timelines and portals, and has a little bit of teen kissing, secret monsters, shape changers, levitating and snorkelling, and some stuff with common or garden necromancy, scary monsters, and sheep poo. This is the first part of a bigger story so it's not surprising that the end of it is a bit of a cliffhanger. I'd like to know what happens next.

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