Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Horrid by Katrina Leno

21 reviews

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. 

💬 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.

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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

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Child death, Animal death, and Death of parent

Moderate: Murder and Suicide

tpsebast92's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Animal death, Death of parent, and Child death

Minor: Violence and Bullying

llyrian's review

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

 This was going to be a 4.5 to 4.75 but the ending was really weird and rushed imo, I didn't like it.

It was beautifully written and atmospheric, and when I get goosebumps and a prickle on the back of my neck from a horror story it really means something,
but I saw the plottwist coming very early on, and the ending, like I said, wasn't great. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Grief, and Murder

Moderate: Animal death, Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Violence, and Bullying

Minor: Alcohol

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

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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

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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

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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

malucvm's review against another edition

dark fast-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, Death of parent, and Animal death

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. 

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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,

brookey8888's review

dark mysterious 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

3.5

I really enjoyed this. I just wish it was a tad spookier and I didn’t really like the ending it felt rushed. I also wish the rhyme played a bigger part. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Grief, Bullying, Death, Death of parent, Child death, and Animal cruelty