Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Liar, Dreamer, Thief by Maria Dong

20 reviews

mmcloe's review against another edition

funny mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.5

A bit disappointed with this. For a story so focused on narratives and fiction and the ways they blend and shape our reality, it was incredibly un-writerly. Not much engagement with texts, madness, myth, queerness, capitalism, hauntings - all the impulses driving the plot forward. 

If this were made into an HBO miniseries I'd watch it in a heartbeat!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide and Kidnapping

tenderbench's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Blood, Suicide attempt, Mental illness, Suicide, and Stalking

Minor: Car accident, Child death, Excrement, Cancer, and Sexual harassment

whenjessreads's review against another edition

dark funny medium-paced

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

3.5

It was initially difficult to tell what genre Liar, Dreamer, Thief fit into - was it literary fiction? Magical realism? A thriller? Some sort of contemporary take on the difficulties of trying to live an average life when your mind is anything but average? Maybe all of the above.

I’ll give you a super brief run down: the MC is a queer Korean-American train-wreck of a human being, who is lightly stalking someone she works with… until she watches him jump off a bridge (while blaming it on her), and has to put aside her rituals and obsessions that keep her safe in order to figure out just what the f*** is going on. Oh, and also attempt to keep her head in the real world, instead of the children’s-book-Korean-fantasy-land that she occasionally lives in. Yup.

I adore books that blur the line between reality and fantasy, and I love that this book did so through the lens of mental illness and an unreliable narrator. Not knowing whether the mystery was real or imagined was something that definitely kept me going.

I also really enjoy reading first person narration when the MC has a psyche like a bowl of noodles. (Maybe it just feels more familiar 😂)

One personal issue - I just think I’ve read a few too many books over the past few years with the formula “average girl sees something bad happen and automatically becomes a questionably amateur detective”, otherwise I might have rated this one higher. I also think the pacing was off in places, and the bad guy was a little one-dimensional. 

Honestly though, the MC was so messy and complex that I enjoyed this book anyway - and probably would have enjoyed it even without the mystery aspect.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness

Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Minor: Car accident, Stalking, Cancer, and Gun violence

stardustdreamer's review against another edition

dark 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? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Ableism, Toxic relationship, Death, Gore, Stalking, Injury/Injury detail, Domestic abuse, and Blood

Moderate: Medical trauma, Car accident, Panic attacks/disorders, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Medical content, Cancer, and Suicide

shannon_michelle's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark hopeful mysterious medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Stalking and Mental illness

Moderate: Suicide and Suicidal thoughts

dayslife143's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

I loved this book! Such. Well done unreliable narrator, I wasn't fully convinced what was real till the last chapter! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Gun violence, and Suicide

Moderate: Stalking

azazellos_fang's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Gaslighting, Panic attacks/disorders, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Moderate: Stalking, Ableism, Murder, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Abandonment, Gaslighting, and Suicide

leonoralvatron4_5's review against another edition

challenging emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Stalking, and Suicide

kmsander4's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious 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

3.75

I have mixed feelings about reviewing Liar, Dreamer, Thief.

On the one hand, I really struggled to get into this book. The first 50 pages or so felt like a real slog. Katrina kept slipping in and out of her "dream world" and I was having to contend with paragraphs explaining geometry to me. I left geometry back in school. I couldn't figure out what it was doing in a book that was described as a page-turning thriller.

Then, all of a sudden, it turned. The twists started to appear. Characters started to become shadier and shadier, fewer things were adding up, clues kept leading Katrina all over the place. Now, the pages were really turning. I wanted to see where this was going. I began to understand Katrina's dream world. I even realized the purpose of the geometry talk as it guided me through the evolving storyline that quickly become more twisted and convulted.

The ending? Well, I saw some of it coming but certainly not all of it. Clues that I thought were being dropped for me to connect, turned out to be big fat red herrings. And who doesn't love a good red herring?

So, in short, yes, the first chunk feels a bit tedious but once you push through it, the thriller really shines!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Mental illness, Stalking, and Panic attacks/disorders

Moderate: Murder and Vomit

Minor: Gun violence, Violence, Terminal illness, Kidnapping, Car accident, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Cancer

lettuce_read's review against another edition

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic friendship, Blood, Suicide, Mental illness, Vomit, and Stalking

Minor: Cancer