Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas

9 reviews

saliwali's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense 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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, Blood, Grief, Bullying, Eating disorder, Gun violence, Murder, Mental illness, Sexual content, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

maresuju's review

adventurous emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Mental illness, Death, Ableism, and Gun violence

Moderate: Abandonment, Death, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Murder, Toxic friendship, Violence, and Grief

Minor: Suicide attempt, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Cancer, Eating disorder, Animal death, Blood, and Pregnancy

spinat's review against another edition

emotional lighthearted reflective slow-paced

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

4.0

The book is more about psychology and mental health, than about science nitty-gritty. It raises some interesting topics. Though many characters are facing mental health issues, and perception of death being a big theme, the book has a rather warm tone, with loving family members and life partners.

and the conclave conditioning its employees out of compassion, the harm that it's doing, and an individual's role in it all, are scary reflections of reality, and we'll portrayed, I think.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Eating disorder, Toxic friendship, Mental illness, Ableism, Blood, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Grief, Sexual harassment, and Animal cruelty

thequiltyreader's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious 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? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Blood, Bullying, Cancer, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Eating disorder, Gaslighting, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, and Toxic friendship

cheye13's review

adventurous hopeful mysterious 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mental illness, and Murder

Moderate: Eating disorder, Pregnancy, Grief, Death of parent, Infidelity, Gore, Sexual content, Toxic friendship, Gun violence, and Medical content

Minor: Alcohol, Animal death, Cancer, Stalking, and Violence

Many mental illnesses are mentioned or alluded to, but the specific illnesses of main characters are PTSD and Bipolar Disorder

leialou's review

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

Key Themes: 

Mental Health, Grief, Friendship, Death.

Best (or Worst) Moments: 

I found the best moments were those viewed from Audette's POV - just found it more interesting with the murder and mystery solving, and she had an agenda and clear goals which also helped. 

Was this Book What I Expected?: 

No - with it being called ‘the psychology of time travel’ I expected it to focus even more on psychology. I’m an MSc Psychology student so obviously love psychology so I think I would have enjoyed the book even more if it went into more detail about the actual psychology behind it all - not just basic ‘she would have had those mental health problems without time travel’. I know there was some explanation but just felt it wasn’t enough - but maybe that would be too much for someone without a background in psychology? 

Review: 

This book was okay - I enjoyed it but it just wasn’t what I was expecting and it kind of disappointed me as a result. 

Things to Research Further 

The concept of how time travel could impact a person psychologically is so interesting - obviously not applicable until time-travel is a thing but would be such an interesting topic to study. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Toxic friendship, Mental illness, Murder, Gun violence, and Gore

aardwyrm's review

adventurous emotional mysterious 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

4.0

The mystery, worldbuilding, and conceit carry the book to great heights of technical accomplishment. You never figure anything out until a moment before the characters do, but it always makes sense when you get there. The characters themselves are deeply strange, but they're supposed to be.

Dialogue is rather strangely arranged, with paragraph breaks in all the wrong places. Stylistically, this works to make the act of reading a sort of constant time travel itself. You're forever tracking back and forth to figure out who's talking. While it works on a meta level, the affectation does make reading kind of a weird mechanical experience.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Violence, Murder, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Self harm, Racism, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical content, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Gaslighting, Eating disorder, Death of parent, Death, Car accident, Alcoholism, and Ableism

marlinspirkhall's review

adventurous emotional funny inspiring mysterious reflective 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

5.0

  (review from January 2020)

  Oh my God. I didn't have any idea what to expect going into this, and then this book gave me so much diversity, an engaging plot, fantastic characters and amazing writing. I fucking adored it. I asked my dad if he deliberately got me a book which festured lesbian and bisexual women as main characters and he said he just stumbled across it in the sci fi section at a bookstore.

  This book really inspired me and gave me lots of writing steam for this year, and I'll definitely be rereading it at some point. It took me just over a week to read and I remember bringing it to work one day, though I didn't get that far with it during my short lunch break. My phone battery started going on the fritz about this time, too, so it was nice to have something to do other than plug it in to charge and pray for the best.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Eating disorder, Torture, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Homophobia, Biphobia, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, and Self harm

Toxic Friendship: This is pretty integral to the book- one character is treated badly by the others, and deliberately exluded. Hazing, Torture: In order to join the time-travellers, there are extensive hazing techniques in place, which includes playing the "Angel Of Death"

- whereby a character must tell a child that her father is about to die, terrifying her (and traumatising her for life).

Biphobia/homophobia:

Bisexual character discusses "avoiding certain timelines" because there are times in the future where society is biphobic. She describes it as "one step forwards one step back", which is certainly not a hopeful view of the future.

Fire/Fire Injury, Self harm:

Time travellers have seen that they will get injured in an accident in the future, and therefore willingly step into time machines which they know are about to explode.

Eating disorder: A character develops a specific fixation where she only feels able to eat a specific time and place,

so there are several versions of herself gathered in the park eating their packed lunches.

This is dealt with gently in the plot, but it is a fairly important checkpoint.

sophieduncan's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Grief, Mental illness, Toxic friendship, Death, Eating disorder, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Gaslighting, and Gun violence