Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden

17 reviews

polkapunkband's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Child abuse, Grief, Hate crime, Islamophobia, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Violence, Gun violence, Murder, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Suicidal thoughts, Alcohol, Mass/school shootings, Panic attacks/disorders, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Abandonment, Addiction, Alcoholism, Confinement, Cursing, Mental illness, Pandemic/Epidemic, Racism, Sexism, Medical content, Car accident, Rape, and Sexual assault

itsbumley's review against another edition

dark reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Cursing, Death of parent, Pedophilia, Mental illness, Death, Violence, Sexual violence, Grief, Kidnapping, Racism, and Suicide

Minor: Mass/school shootings

junglejelly's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

A book I picked up on a whim, wanting to read something different and out of my reading genres. And gosh was it worth it.

The writing is beautiful and captivating but also haunting and sad.

I loved the mixture of writing styles from free verse to transcripts to poems. It really fitted with the character Wolfie and what he goes through.

A book I would 100% recommend to others. I just wish it was a bit longer, despite a satisfying ending, but I'll just have to read more of Godden's work instead.

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Death of parent, Mental illness, and Violence

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Physical abuse

maeverose's review

Dnfed @ 48%

TL;DR: none of it grabbed my attention, the writing style irritated me, and it’s very depressing. Which is the point but if I’m not getting anything from it why would I put myself through that?

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. On one hand I can see why people would like it, but it’s definitely not something that  works for everyone and unfortunately it didn’t work for me.

To start, this book should come with about every content warning you can think of. It’s very dark. If you have a fear of death or struggle with suicidal thoughts I’d skip it, or at least go in prepared. I don’t have a fear of death and this book triggered my anxiety. There are lots of brutal and sad depictions of deaths, a lot of them thrown at you back to back. It’s a lot. Please check content warnings.

At one point there is a mention of jk rowling and harry potter. It wasn’t exactly positive or negative, but there is also a lot of language on motherhood that’s very tied to the ability to biologically reproduce and I saw zero acknowledgment of trans or non binary people, which for me is a bit of a red flag. I know nothing about this author so I’m not making any claims, it just gave me the ick so I wanted to mention it.

I’m not a fan of the writing style, and I feel like this is the type of book where you need to like the writing in order to like the book. It’s purposefully very repetitive and I get annoyed by repetition in books. It’s also very vulgar, which I don’t think is an objective issue I just personally really dislike excessively gross writing and this has a lot of that. There were certain quotes or chapters that I liked, but most of it really didn’t work for me.

Obviously I didn’t finish it but I’m  not completely sure what the point of the book is. Other than a brief message about cherishing your life and accepting death as a part of life, which is a great message, but it doesn’t focus much on that. It jumped around a lot, to different deaths both fictional and I think some real ones, then switches to Death’s pov which is almost fable-like, then Wolf’s pov which focuses a lot on his grief and mental health issues. It switches between lyrical prose and poetry. It felt more concerned with aesthetics than an actual story or message, but being as I didn’t finish it I could be wrong about that.

Really disappointed tbh because I thought I’d love this :/ That’s on me.

I’ll end with two quotes that I did like:
Pg 45 “funny that, funny how we feel like we know things about people we never knew, isn’t it? We are puppets, we are children, without thinking we so often mouth the words our lips are taught.”

Pg 117 “Death counts on Time. Time loves a deadline: a dead line. Time loves some finality; my cold and clean finish. Life believes Time is for Life, that Time is for the Living. Life is most comfortable living in denial and refusing to believe that Time and Death must also have some sort of love for each other.”

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Cursing, Death of parent, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Suicide, Murder, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Violence

Moderate: Drug abuse, Alcohol, Racism, Blood, Suicide attempt, Alcoholism, Excrement, and Vomit

Minor: Car accident, Slavery, War, Misogyny, and Fatphobia

Lots of descriptions of different deaths. Many of which are very violent or disturbing. In certain chapters they list different deaths back to back and it’s very intense.

nreyno's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Mental illness, Islamophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Colonisation, Death, Physical abuse, Violence, Suicide attempt, Self harm, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Slavery, Grief, and Fire/Fire injury

leanneymu's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful reflective fast-paced

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

4.0

Part poem, part fiction, part memoir, part folklore, this is a really interesting piece of writing. Occasionally, I found the looseness of the narrative a bit difficult to follow - and the continuous repetition made it feel like a written speech, rather than a novel, as such - but overall, I really enjoyed it. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Mental illness, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide

graceesford's review

dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Murder, Addiction, Child death, Violence, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Drug abuse, Drug use, Sexism, Slavery, Child abuse, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Rape

leabhar_love's review

dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Violence, Death, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, and Murder

Moderate: Kidnapping and Alcoholism

Minor: Car accident

thalianni's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

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

2.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Murder, Physical abuse, and Mental illness

Moderate: Slavery, War, Suicide, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Physical abuse, Violence, and Terminal illness

amberlen's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

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

4.25

This is a very good book that was tough for me to read.
I cried a lot. Like, every other page. The kind of crying that is good and cathartic, though.
Despite the heavy topics this book deals with, it managed not to slip into hopelessness and despair but found a good balance between devastating and life-affirming. 
The story leans more toward philosophical musings about life and death without too much plot but that did not bother me. (Although I found some of Mrs Death's chapters to contain a tad too much monolguing.)
In the subject matter and the way it was approached, this story reminded me a lot of Neil Gaiman's writings, especially the disclaimer in the beginning. 

Lastly, I absolutely loved the blank pages at the end, where you can write the name of loved ones or other people who've died but you want to remember. That's just such a good idea. I was quite bummed that I read this as an ebook. Learn form my mistakes and buy the physical copy, if you can.

In short, read this, if you want to be repeatedly punched in the gut emotionally.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Violence

Moderate: Suicide