Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride

3 reviews

amelia_horseman's review

dark funny tense slow-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Animal death, Death, Body horror, Torture, Grief, Blood, Violence, Murder, and Physical abuse

juan_adhd_reading's review against another edition

adventurous funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

It was really fun! In many ways, this reminded me a lot of Percy Jackson, with a paranormal theme and geared towards teens / YA. I did think things got solved a bit quickly in the end, and it did have some pacing issues. But, I had a great time reading it, and I’m excited for the sequel. Easy read, would recommend

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Physical abuse, Blood, Animal death, and Animal cruelty

Moderate: Murder, Kidnapping, Self harm, Sexual content, Grief, and Confinement

Minor: Bullying

The book is about a college dropout that discovers he’s a Necromancer, so death plays a really big part of the story. This is a YA book so most of deaths are not explicit, but the descriptions of injuries, abuse and the use of blood to perform magic can be. Among the things to watch out for:

Sam’s friend is decapitated (non explicit)but comes back as a talking head; Sam is severely injured in the back while confronting a man we later discover is a werewolf; a werewolf woman (Brid) is kidnapped, stripped down (non sexual) and experimented on; Sam is kidnapped and gets a concussion; Sam and Brid are trapped in a cage and severely abused, including hitting, backhand slapping and at one point whipped; Sam and Brid have sex (non explicit); Sam has to kill a dove to perform necromancy; Sam slits his own arm and hands to draw blood (same reason); Sam sees the spirits of previously tortured and murdered victims (moderately graphic); Sam kills his captor by slitting his throat (graphic description of blood); Sam friend’s Ramon is injured with broken glass during the final battle, collapsing into a vial that contains were-bear blood.

booksthatburn's review against another edition

funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.5

Every once in a while I read a book just because of the title, this time that was a very good decision. HOLD ME CLOSER, NECROMANCER is about a young man who discovers very abruptly that he's actually a sorcerer and his mother never told him.  Suddenly dealing with just enough power to get him in trouble but not enough to get him out of it, he has caught the attention of a very powerful and territorial necromancer who is still making up their mind whether to use him or just get rid of him altogether. Thoroughly irreverent but able to buckle down when things get serious, this was a fun ride.

The whole book has a wry sense of humor: understanding how serious things are but joking about it anyway. It's a "laugh at the darkness in order to not weep" sort of feeling, and it completely fits the protagonist's personality. It builds the world and what we need to know of the magic in a kind of haphazard way, more about how the characters need and react to the information than trying to lay out the rules for the reader. I like the choice to have the villain be a point of view character, he seems almost cartoonishly evil when he’s around the main character because his goals are so antithetical to everyone else’s happiness that he could easily have felt overplayed or one-note in his dealings with Sam. Getting his perspective and goals in his own words didn’t make me like him any better as a person, but it made him a much fuller character and I think it worked well.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood and Physical abuse

Moderate: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Kidnapping, and Murder

Minor: Ableism, Cancer, Racism, and Sexism

CW for ableism, sexism, racism (fantasy), confinement, kidnapping, physical abuse, cancer (backstory), body horror, blood, murder, major character death, death.