Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

Outlawed by Anna North

7 reviews

hellokatya's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring 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

5.0

i absolutely adored this book. a beautifully written and developed story of love, loss, friendship, and family. please please read this book. definitely one i’ll be recommending to anyone who will listen.
bring some tissue though

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Death, Infertility, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Misogyny, Grief, and Blood

Moderate: Drug use, Chronic illness, Abandonment, Pregnancy, Forced institutionalization, Mental illness, Religious bigotry, Homophobia, and Miscarriage

Minor: Murder, Sexual assault, Suicide attempt, Child death, Suicidal thoughts, Police brutality, Fire/Fire injury, Lesbophobia, and War

mfrisk's review

adventurous hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I quite enjoyed the characters I got to know through this book, the settings, and the journey we go on as the characters develop and learn. This is a fun feminist western that brings a new perspective to the genre. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Medical trauma, and Medical content

Moderate: Infidelity, Blood, Death, Drug use, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Murder, and Religious bigotry

hmatt's review against another edition

adventurous fast-paced

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

3.0

I love the concept of this story so much, and it had so much potential. The world-building is super well done, and I love alternate histories. Unfortunately, I came away with the feeling that the author tried to fit so much world and plot in that these got in the way of both the actual storytelling and the character-building.

Storytelling
I feel like the author was trying to fit too many events into too short of a narrative. This might have been okay, but there were so many minor events that I think we should have spent less time on, and a number of climactic events that we spent barely any time on whatsoever. A lot of these major events "fade to black" as soon as the action starts, and then we are caught up on what happened in retrospect later on - I was REALLY not a fan of this technique, and I don't think it made sense for the "western" genre.

Character-building
We do get a lot of information on most of the characters but, again, it's almost too much for how short of a book it is. What we lose out on, in my opinion, is a more profound emotional connection with the main character. We don't really dwell on her losses or feel them with her, which is extra strange given the whole novel is told in first-person.

TL;DR
The idea behind the novel is fantastic, but it tries to fit too much in. The concepts it seeks to explore are really only half-fleshed-out and the characters are hard to relate to, simply because the plot moves on too fast to hold space for these introspections.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Sexual content, Medical content, Infidelity, Gun violence, Misogyny, Blood, Violence, Murder, Infertility, Sexual violence, Racism, Police brutality, Death, Drug use, Homophobia, Emotional abuse, Torture, Sexism, Pregnancy, Medical trauma, Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, Hate crime, Gore, Miscarriage, and Mental illness

Moderate: Rape, Confinement, Transphobia, Classism, Gore, Alcohol, Forced institutionalization, Domestic abuse, and Sexual assault

Minor: Animal death and Drug abuse

CWs non-exhaustive

cheye13's review

adventurous dark emotional inspiring 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? Yes

4.0

This was very engaging and a fresh take on the genre. It's gave me exactly what I'd been missing from Sarah Gailey's Upright Women Wanted. The world was tangible, and I especially appreciated how well nuances were conveyed – depression, bisexuality, gender identity – without the vocabulary we use.

That being said, I don't think western stories are really for me? There's always such a deep pain and/or hopelessness within them that never seems to hit my catharsis button. This one came very close with each of the outlaw's backstories, but the ultimate plot just left me with, "Well. Okay."

This was definitely my favorite western I've ever read, though. Leagues above.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Medical content, Misogyny, and Infertility

Moderate: Pregnancy, Grief, Blood, Abortion, Confinement, Miscarriage, and Homophobia

Minor: Ableism, Rape, Alcohol, Child death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Incest, Infidelity, Racism, Sexual content, and Suicidal thoughts

ableism wrt: implied bipolar disorder (or perhaps other psychosis), implied post partum depression medical/injury content wrt: gunshot wounds, childbirth & miscarriage, castration, hypothermia, various illnesses

nothingforpomegranted's review against another edition

2.25

Ostensibly set in a mostly-dystopian 1894 Texas town that places a premium on women's ability to bear children and suspects infertile women of witchcraft, this book is narrated by Ada, a seventeen-year-old wife and midwife's apprentice who has been exiled from her community after a year of marriage with no child. Passionate about science and serving women, Ada finds herself in the company of the Hole in the Wall gang, a group of outlawed outsiders with a flexible and fluid approach to gender, love, sex, and justice. 

This feminist take on a Western novel, filled with crime, adventure, and challenging authority, was certainly creative, but I was quite the right audience for it. Indeed, I was so distracted by the references to race, doctors, baby Jesus, the Flu and Fever, and the seeming dissolution of the United States that I was almost more focused on trying to figure out whether this was a dystopian alternative history (a Confederate win in the Civil War?) or a dystopian future (post COVID-19?), and I'm honestly still confused. 

I also was pretty confused by the role of religion and by all of the characters. There were many, each with a painful background, but none was particularly well-developed, and the sub-plots detracted rather than added to the story. The one exception to this, in my opinion, was Lark's story, which surprised and intrigued me, but he, too, was an underdeveloped character who stuck around too briefly. 

I appreciate the reviewer who acknowledged that this book offers a different take on the Hole in the Wall gang. I had no idea that this gang was a real concept and really disappointed that there was no Author's Note explaining that research and that choice (which guess means this is an alt-history novel?). 

I picked this up because I needed a quick read to help propel me out of a slump (too many classics in a row/at a time can do that to you), and it was definitely successful in that respect. The story was engaging enough and kept me turning the pages for the few hours that this took to finish, but ultimately, I think Anna North bit off more than she could chew--infertility, religion, feminism, justice, gender fluidity, insomnia, mental health, medicine, mothering, Western adventure--and it really didn't work for me. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infertility, Sexual content, Sexism, Religious bigotry, Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, Medical content, Infidelity, Gun violence, Forced institutionalization, and Abortion

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child death, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Incest, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Rape, Racism, Racial slurs, Pregnancy, Police brutality, Suicide attempt, and Suicidal thoughts

kingweirdo's review

adventurous hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

It's actually every bit as good as "a feminist western about reproductive rights and gender" sounds.

It also really worked for me, since the enigmatic third-person hero and leader is a bipolar, nonbinary person (not that the book uses those words) and the story is set in the Powder River Basin.

... I'm a bipolar nonbinary person who was born in the Powder River Basin. 😅

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Infertility, Miscarriage, Misogyny, and Police brutality

Moderate: Blood, Death, Drug use, Medical content, Mental illness, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, and Transphobia

acarter's review

adventurous inspiring medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book RULED. A snappy, smart look at sex, gender, fertility, race, legality, and so much more. I’ll be thinking about this one for many years to come!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, and Gun violence

Moderate: Child death, Drug use, Forced institutionalization, Infertility, Infidelity, Medical content, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Religious bigotry, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Incest