Reviews with content warning for Death - The Dead Father's Club

Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Dead Father's Club by Matt Haig

9 reviews

hannah2896's review against another edition

dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

2.0

After loving the midnight library and devouring the audio version of how to stop time, this was a huge disappointment. I found Philip a very unlikeable character and the whole story was very slow paced and almost boring.

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tiffyb's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

I picked up The Dead Father’s Club as an effort to spend December reading more from authors I appreciated this year. How To Stop Time was one of my favorite reads, and this was the only other Matt Haig book available on Libby.

This book is incredibly difficult to describe and was more of an experience than a book. I was 100% invested and can’t feel that this book deserves less than four stars, despite its flaws. There was a great plot, some intense moments, and we are left with food for thought at the end. In many ways, the author managed to capture several aspects of how it FEELS to be a child in distress. About 3/4 of the way through, it got heavy, like I felt physically heavy and had to put the book down. And at the end, there was a lot left unanswered, which to be fair, is not something I always like in a book (but I didn’t mind it too much here because I did feel that I had the general answers to what had actually happened.)

The prose felt experimental: I HATED the format- an eleven year old boy’s journal. It was intentionally overflowing with run-on sentences and bad punctuation and random CAPS LOCK and incorrect punctuation and spelling. But it still didn’t feel anything like what a real 11-year-old would write, especially as the boy sometimes seemed older than his age and at other times much younger. I originally found this voice to be annoying and quite exhausting to read, but as the book went on, I began to see it as a sort of poetry. I’m not sure if there was actually a poetic rhythm to the prose, but it flowed so well that I found myself reading as though I was riding the waves of Haig’s writing. Eventually, the writing style faded into the background, and I realized that it was more of a creative and poetic choice than an honest effort at an adult sounding like a child.

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sakisreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced

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

3.5

✨ Thrifted ✨

I should have realised this was a Macbeth-esque story, but I haven’t read Shakespeare in so long 🫠 Oops!

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I whizzed through this, not necessarily because it was written well but because there was always some discomfort lurking within (and I suppose Matt Haig’s intention was to write it as a 11 year old boy whose grammar isn’t going to be great) 😳

I’m giving it a 3.5 out of 5 stars ✨ Not sure what to read next to be honest 😂 This one put me in a weird place!

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