Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

Lost Boy by Christina Henry

8 reviews

bcsylve's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Animal death, Blood, Violence, Child death, and Death

Moderate: Gun violence, Toxic friendship, Fire/Fire injury, Animal cruelty, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Addiction, Alcohol, Physical abuse, Sexism, Misogyny, Child abuse, Kidnapping, Alcoholism, and Domestic abuse

tarynmyheart's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

3.75

If you liked Lord of the Flies and Peter Pan + want an easy/quick read, this is it. Can be graphic at times.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Emotional abuse, Animal death, Death, Vomit, Kidnapping, Murder, Abandonment, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, Blood, Animal cruelty, Child death, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Grief

josoko's review

adventurous dark sad tense

• Strong character development? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Toxic friendship, Blood, Child death, Death, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Violence, and Death of parent

Moderate: Gaslighting, Torture, Emotional abuse, and Sexism

Minor: Gun violence, Kidnapping, Animal cruelty, and Animal death

mercydesy's review

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

4.0

This book gives you a whole new perspective of peter pan and his lost boys and it's truly enjoyable to read.

The beginning started of really slow and reading through the first half of the book was a bit of a pain, because nothing important really happend and the book didn't really get to the point. Many scenes were way too long and could be shortend a bit.

I loved Jamies development! His anger and annoyance for Peter were pretty obvious since the beginning.

Despite that, you could clearly feel the pain that boy went through and the moment he fell completly out of love with Peter and finally started to act like that and  to grow into an adult 

The book was brutally written and at some points it was repulsive and disgusting to read if you keep in mind that 8-12 year old boys did those gruesome things like slaughtering others without a bit of mercy. This writing made the book really thrilling and fascinating for me. It was very gripping at the second half of the book because of the fast pace and hoping that your favorite side characters do not brutally die like most of the others. 
The fast pace at the end made it also very enjoyable to read and even though we know the ending of the book since the beginning, there are many small plottwists and turns that keep you occupied.

All in all I would recommend this book and encourage to keep reading even if the first half is a bit slow, it is  worth it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, Death, Gore, and Child death

Moderate: Confinement, Grief, and Kidnapping

Minor: Child abuse, Sexual violence, Stalking, Alcohol, Animal death, Sexual assault, Alcoholism, and Animal cruelty

definitelynotnina's review

adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

5.0

It was not at all what I expected when I picked this up, but it's a wonderfully twisted version of the story. Not for the faint of heart.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Blood, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Child death, Murder, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, and Body horror

Moderate: Kidnapping, Misogyny, Child abuse, and Animal cruelty

Minor: Sexual violence and Outing

darkty's review

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death of parent, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Child death, Toxic friendship, and Abandonment

Moderate: Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Gaslighting, Alcoholism, Death of parent, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Murder, Kidnapping, Gore, Grief, Rape, Violence, Gaslighting, and Toxic friendship

skylar_cr_wolf's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad fast-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? N/A

4.75

I know my copy of Lost Boy has a “The Guardian” quote screaming at me that I won’t be able to look at Peter Pan in the same way anymore… But would it surprise someone if I already didn’t? 

I liked and still like the story of Peter Pan, a boy who is so determined to never grow up and stays forever 11 years old. However, I cannot find the best words to describe how well I think Henry did in retelling the story from a total different point of view and giving the children Peter takes to his island their own character traits. 
This really feels like a beginning of how the story could have, might have and perhaps has actually taken its turn between Peter and his very first Lost Boy. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Murder

Minor: Kidnapping, Alcoholism, and Child abuse

morganish's review against another edition

dark sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Full disclosure, I was in a rush and needed to read this for a book club, and could only get it on audiobook, so... 1. There might not be things I remember as clearly as if I was just reading. But 2. This was my first audiobook since... middle school!? Just, a really long time. I kind of just want to download all my thoughts about becoming a recent audiobook convert here instead of a review, but I'll do my best to focus on the actual book instead. 

Lost Boy is a Peter Pan prequel from Hook's perspective, where Peter Pan is a monstrous, manipulative sociopath. It's a really fantastic metaphor for how abuse, especially abuse of minors, works psychologically by pitting victims against each other, explored in a variety of ways that absolutely pull no punches. If you can hang with that kind of content, I can't really recommend it highly enough, and definitely sets this book at least at 4 stars for me. 

But as deeply entrenched as I was in the narrative, there's a particular plot direction somewhere vaguely in the middle of the book that really, really didn't work for me. From a queer lens in specific, it felt like a bit of an oversight how it's handled, though I'm not sure straight/cis readers will notice or think much of it. It soured a lot of the rest of the story in overall enjoyability for me personally. And then, ultimately, the ending felt like it was trying to wrap up and intersect with the canonical version of Peter Pan. This focus on intersection felt like it undermined the story's powerful themes, trying to hit a checklist of events instead of giving Lost Boy the emotional/psychological ending it deserved. For me, these two negative aspects stood out enough to take what was initially a really gripping story and put it in the category of enjoyable for the moment, but not making it into a new favorite. 

If you like retellings or tie-in stories about classic children's tales, especially if they shed a new, more adult, darker light on the original, you should seriously consider picking this up. From what I've seen so far, it succeeds at this more than any other retelling I've encountered. However if you're triggered by stories that realistically explore how abuse works, I definitely would advise proceeding with caution. And I'd also say if you have no tolerance for stories that don't consider/make space for queer interpretations of certain kinds of plot devices or storylines, this might not be the story for you. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, Murder, Physical abuse, Torture, Toxic friendship, and Violence

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Domestic abuse, Grief, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Sexism, and War

Minor: Abandonment, Death of parent, and Xenophobia

Additional content warnings: *

A character who is previously believed to be another lost boy is accidentally revealed to have breasts. No acknowledgement is made either by any characters or the text itself that this person could be trans. Additionally the MC (who had been growing close to said character before the reveal) and all of the other boys instantaneously find themselves with crushes on her, the lone major female character in the text. Which I read as problematic for being both a sexist portrayal of female characters and as a weird, unnecessarily forced "no homo" decision for the book.