Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Shutter

Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

Shutter by Ramona Emerson

7 reviews

throwback682's review against another edition

mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

A young Navajo woman who can see ghosts works as a crime scene photographer and suspects her coworkers of dirty deeds. She has to simultaneously navigate her culture, family issues, and grief while being followed by angry ghosts bent on revenge who need her help.

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leweylibrary's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious 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? It's complicated

1.5

It only gets points for the kind of fun setting and indigenous rep, sorry 🤷‍♀️ otherwise I kinda hated it lol.

I did not enjoy reading it, I had to force myself to finish it for a book club, and I had sooo many issues with it that completely took me out of the story. Like her awful friends wtf??? They were horrible and I really hope they weren't inspired by the author's real friends lol. What kind of friends automatically ask if you've murdered someone or destroyed your own apartment?? I wanted to like the supernatural element, and it was one of the few things keeping me interested, but there could've been so much more done with it. I felt like a lot of the conversations, situations, and relationships just made no sense. I truly don't know how this was long listed for the National Book Prize. Like how.

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cemetereality's review against another edition

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dark funny informative reflective sad 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? No

3.75

Every moment spent between Rita and her Grandmother are so deeply moving that you can put aside how rushed the other portions are. The details of the crime scenes and original story start off so clear and compelling. It gets jumbled and we end without feeling finished or getting answers. I highly recommend reading Shutter, because the moments of familial joy and pain are palpable. It’s a beautiful and moving story

the moments with her grandfather’s ghost radiating warm light around her room… I could cry thinking about their relationship. Rita and her grandmother going through the trunk of painful memories was heartbreaking, but also a beautiful moment of understanding between them.

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cait808's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

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

3.5

my mom picked this as our first family book club read! twas short and sweet and tasty, with a few things that disappointed me.

Rita is a sendup to haggard, perpetually tired girlies everywhere, and her commitment to doing the right thing is admirable. Every time she propitiated the phantoms in a long-suffering tone, I liked our everywoman heroine more, and the descriptions of her actual family and the family she found outside the reservation warmed my heart. I fw the final line of the book v much and it feels like a love letter to both the kind of child Rita was and the woman Rita has become.

I am tepid about the chapter shift between past and present day. Once it was used to great effect—a question coming up in a present chapter was immediately answered by the following past chapter—but otherwise I kind of felt like it was relying on cliffhangers to get me to keep reading.

Also as an aside, I wish I knew more about cameras—each chapter has a subscript of a make/model of a camera of importance to the focal point (hehe) of the chapter. The climactic chapters are simply labelled with an f-stop setting indicating an ever-widening aperture, ending in “wide open.” Neat!

I felt the ending was very rushed. The book needed more chapters to flesh out SEVERAL interesting character skeletons; but unfortunately we are left with:

- Garcia, who

is a mustache-twirling villain with barely a motive beyond “greed” and “impatience” driving this maelstrom of events serendipitously happening right as Rita is at her tiredest. (I hate how two of the most plot-impactful moments were just… chance encounters? ie the party, the wake.)

- Armenta, who

barely serves a purpose beyond an exposition dump, when he deserves so much more (his old partner used dirty money to buy a cabin for his wife who has already forgotten who he is, and is living in fear? resignation? of his own death by the hands of the cartel or his partner, who knows which? what a crazy emotional millieu).

- Erma! Would’ve loved more

flashbacks or dream sequences or investigations highlighting Erma’s force of will and relationships to Mathias and her family (cannot forgive that wake scene with Erma seeing her mom and daughter being cut short, acab baby).

- Always need more on Shanice—

what did that reunion look like? how have the two found each other again? has Rita come to see Shanice as her own person or is she yet another foil for Gloria? for the mom she never really had?

no notes on Grandma though. now THAT’S what I call a grandma. the idyllic yet grounded description of

a day with grandma picking, drying, and brewing tea? one of my fav chapters fr. 🤌🏼🤌🏼

(just a day after, I watched the MV for the sigur ros song HOPPÍPOLA and had a nice good cry)

Solid book overall, would def read from this author again, especially bc of how she writes both old people and body parts strewn across an Albuquerque highway with such care.

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just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective 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? It's complicated

3.0

I don't usually read thrillers, a trend that is probably pretty obvious if you even cursorily follow my reviews, but I was intrigued by this one that made the National Book Award longlist. It's not really that common, at least in my recreational following of the award, for a book categorized as a "thriller" to make the list. (Side note: shout out to libro.fm for the advanced listerner's copy!) And so, here we are.

Rita Todacheene works for the Albuquerque Police Department as a forensic photographer. She's loved cameras and taking photos since she was a child, and this was one of the only options she could find that provided her a stable income and the chance to take photos. It is, perhaps, just inconvenient (or is it more like fate) that she is also secretly able to see ghosts. In her job, they sometimes point her to clues that others have overlooked. In her personal life, it caused quite a bit of strife, as her superstitious Navajo reservation community treated her differently, isolated (with the exception of her grandmother, who raised her), once they found out about her taboo ability. Rita has figured out a way to, for the most part, shut out the ghosts, but the victim of a recent case she photographed just will not leave her alone...and the ghost's push for vengeance will lead Rita into a dangerous cartel inside-man/cover-up situation.

Well, I can see what made this particular thriller special, a literary sort of mystery, that could get it added to the NBA longlist. The writing is...incredibly evocative. I literally made the note "shit, this opening descriptive monologue is visceral" after the first couple pages. And then it never let up. It's intense, I can't lie. The specifics and particulars of the crime scenes Rita photographs are not for the faint-hearted. Seriously, it's an onslaught of gruesome murder scenes and details. Please be ready: all the content warnings for death and violent death and blood and disfigurement, etc. But the use of the photographs and the perspective of the photographer as a narrative device works really well. It adds so much to the tangibility of the narrative. This is just writing that sticks to your bones. And I enjoyed the way the ending took “making peace with death” to a whole new/different level.

Rita's personal development throughout the novel was kept me interested. The story is told in dual storylines. One of the past, as Rita grows up and realizes both that she has the "gift" of seeing ghosts, as well as the turbulent home life that she was thrust into off the reservation as a result of the visions of ghosts and communication with the dead that people’s superstitions made it too hard to live alongside. One in the present, as Rita struggles to help her victim's ghost get answers, and revenge, while trying to balance her own relationships and jobs and normal life stressors. It took me longer to get into the “past” storyline, but about halfway through it got more compelling for me, and the way it built from there, alongside their mystery in the present, balanced well. I loved Rita's relationship with her grandmother, it was an overall highlight, for me, as it was nuanced and genuine in both its flaws and its fullness. Tied in with that, the thread of Navajo culture/traditions/beliefs and contemporary history interspersed lightly, but thoroughly, throughout was phenomenal. It was beautifully tender and esteemed, while Emerson showed great insight into the complexities of the advantages and disadvantages of being raised solely on the reservation versus in combination with off-reservation life (both the involuntary, like the residential schools, and the self-determined).

Interestingly, I feel like the literary side of this novel overshadowed the mystery/thriller aspects a little too much. Like, I felt a weirdly low amount of tension while reading, considering the intensity and high-stakes of the plot and the life-threatening situations Rita finds herself in. Also, there was some plot stuff that either didn't feel right or wasn't my cup of tea. First, and this is my thing with thrillers, something always happens that feels too convenient or easy (in this case, the party photos) and, really, information she gets from a “retired” detective seemed like it came too easy (like, is he not afraid of backlash or whatever?!). Also, unrelated to most of the rest of the plot, she had a one-night stand with a guy who then never came back...and he was supposed to? It felt like both an unnecessary plot point that then turned into a loose/hanging thread by the end and I felt we could have done without that half-hearted attempt to highlight that Rita "also has a personal life/life outside work." Her friends felt similarly "iffy" as far as their development and role(s) in the greater plot - more convenient that worth being developed in their own right.

Overall, I just don't know about this one. I realize that I might be biased because it's not my typical genre. And there were parts that were great - the writing was a real highlight and the cultural aspects were phenomenal. I also thought the concept was so cool, the idea of ghosts helping a forensic photographer find evidence to capture is wonderful in theory and vision. But the plot and development left something to be desired. And the combination of literary fiction and thriller wasn't enough of either/both together. So, in the end, this maybe was just...not enough...for me.

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sjanke2's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark sad 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

2.75

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maregred's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad 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? It's complicated

4.0

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