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leexpenandpages's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-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
📝 SYNOPSIS:
Struggling with all-consuming rage, Jane North-Robinson feels chilled by more than just the autumn air when she and her mother move to her mother's childhood home, where Jane must dig up her mother's secrets to understand what is happening.
🏚📚🌹🎒🪦👻👩👧🎃😭
👍🏻 RECOMMENDATION:
💛 READ IF you've got nothing else, if it works for a reading challenge, etc.
Struggling with all-consuming rage, Jane North-Robinson feels chilled by more than just the autumn air when she and her mother move to her mother's childhood home, where Jane must dig up her mother's secrets to understand what is happening.
🏚📚🌹🎒🪦👻👩👧🎃😭
👍🏻 RECOMMENDATION:
💛 READ IF you've got nothing else, if it works for a reading challenge, etc.
💬 FAVORITE QUOTES:
• Pg. 201
do books taste like roses?
• Pg. 209-210 (TR: Mental illness, depression)
A flash of the earth with everything destroyed except this house, the last building standing, and Jane within it, trapped inside its walls, not really caring anymore whether she made it out or not.
• Pg. 214 (TR: Mental illness, compulsive behaviors)
She imagined the words dissolving off the paper and sinking into her bloodstream. She imagined her body filled with words. Made up of them. Words instead of blood, words instead of organs.
👓 FORMAT:
📖
📑 COMMENTS:
• The main characters are complex and flawed. Jane's friends are heartwarming and supportive.
• Jane is frustrating slow to figure out what happened, leaping to illogical conclusions for the sake of continuing the mystery.
• I mostly agree with the Booklist quote on the back, which reads, "Leno blends Agatha Christie and Shirley Jackson for a narrative that ranges from unsettling to genuinely terrifying." (I did not find the narrative terrifying but otherwise agree.)
• The book starts a little too slow, and it ends a little too quickly, but the middle is well-paced.
• Race is poorly represented. Some of the characters seem like they were originally intended to be POCs but were changed to white or the author used POC aesthetics. The black characters are black only in description of skin tone.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Bullying, Murder, Child death, Death, Eating disorder, Grief, Addiction, and Mental illness
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Suicide, Pregnancy, Animal death, Violence, Self harm, and Cursing
Minor: Alcohol, Death of parent, Blood, and Classism
quercine's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-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? Yes
4.0
Incredibly unique style and really vivid writing. The setting, atmosphere, and emotions are all very richly detailed, and once things got going I couldn’t stop reading. There are lots of layers to symbolism and metaphors, as well as to the relationships between characters.
The ending was unexpected and shocking, and left me sort of just staring into the middle distance for a while. I hated it as the conclusion for characters I had grown to love but loved it as a piece of writing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Bullying, Death of parent, Body horror, Child death, Grief, Mental illness, Self harm, Death, Eating disorder, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, and Panic attacks/disorders
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Suicide, Violence, and Vomit
Minor: Confinement
vi_holmes's review
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I loved this book so much...until the ending. Leno does such a great job of making you feel Jane's paranoia and her spiral. I was so immersed in the story! To the point that the predictability of the twists was very forgivable. But I can't forgive how blunt and pointless the ending is. It feels like there's a whole 3rd act missing.
TLDR: Scary, but the ending -- or really lack thereof -- took a lot away from it.
TLDR: Scary, but the ending -- or really lack thereof -- took a lot away from it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Child death, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, and Murder
Moderate: Self harm and Suicide
themes of paranoia, anger management issues due to mental health, and feelings of growing insanityilaxaria's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death of parent, Grief, Murder, and Death
Moderate: Alcohol and Suicide
limdurlu's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
1.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Child death, Animal death, and Death of parent
Moderate: Murder and Suicide
paulineerika's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.5
I struggled with how to rate and review this book. What came to mind was that if this had been a horror movie, I would have found it satisfactorily creepy, but would have still wanted more in terms of back story on the North family (especially Emilia North). Actually, I think this would have made quite a good movie. As a book, the tension is there, but not quite as palpable. The need for more information about the North family (and why no one was forthcoming with Jane) is more noticeable. And the ending, which was probably purposely vague, doesn't pack quite as much of a punch and leaves the reader a little frustrated.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Grief, Death, and Child death
Minor: Suicide
amberghinii's review
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Animal death, Death of parent, and Suicide
khakipantsofsex's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Child death, and Eating disorder
Moderate: Suicide
Minor: Animal death and Self harm
booksofautumn's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Pregnancy, Alcohol, Mental illness, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, Gaslighting, Grief, Suicide attempt, Violence, Bullying, and Suicide
the_books_music_life's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
I think I hyped this book up a little too much and was left disappointed. I didn’t care for any of the characters and while Jane is a very complex character, she reads like an unreliable narrator and I don’t particularly enjoy that trope.
The story follows Jane as she struggles with the recent loss of her father and being forced to leave everything she knew and move to her mother’s hometown, which she knows next to nothing about.
Jane is a very complex character and throughout the book she goes through so much. And a lot of it could have been avoided if people around her actually talked and told the truth about things.
I thought the story would/could go in 1 to 2 ways and it went in neither. The direction it took was confusing and unclear and it didn’t help anything that the ending was very rushed.
If I had to describe this book in one sentence it would be “Gaslighting at it finest.”
The whole ‘mystery’ of the book is dragged on forever and the pay off wasn’t that great in my opinion. The only thing I did enjoy was the depiction of grief that we get to see. Grief is never one emotion, it’s many little emotions that mix and mingle into an even biggest emotion and this book did a great job showing that and the ways Jane dealt with her grief was realistic to me.
I did not care for the haunted house/ghost story element as it was very poorly done and just plain confusing.
The ending of the book is done in an open ending kind of way and it didn’t work for this story.
Most of the ‘side characters’ didn’t even have a point in the story, they were just there as someone for Jane to talk to or as conflict. No one had depth or meaning other than being someone Jane talked to.
Overall I found this book confusing, rushed, and the ending very disappointing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Gaslighting, Cursing, Death of parent, Mental illness, and Emotional abuse
Moderate: Child death
Minor: Animal death, Child abuse, and Suicide
Graphic depictions of pica, loss of a sibling, intense depictions of anger issues, underage drinking, forced pregnancy,