Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Rootless

Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

Rootless by Krystle Zara Appiah

19 reviews

aseel_reads's review against another edition

dark emotional 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

4.0

The ending was so sad but it also was a bit of a cop out in terms of dealing with the main conflict of the novel. I think the discussion around not wanting to be a mother was good but could have had more nuance and complexity, same thing with Sam and his relationship was his mother
Just generally there was a lot of interesting plot events that could have been explored more, which is a pity

Content Warnings

bloodmaarked's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional informative reflective slow-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

3.0

i didn't mind this book for the most part, but it really brought home how a bad ending can completely ruin your perception of a story

✧ full review on my tumblr ✧

Content Warnings

annreadsabook's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

2.75

I struggled with this one…there’s no real sense of *why* these characters get married despite their obvious and severe differences in terms of desires for a family. The chemistry was not quite there for me enough for it to be believable that they were SO in love that they felt they could make it work. More than this, though, the lack of interiority on Efe’s part (since in reality the book is mostly about her vantage point) really makes it hard to understand the many terrible choices she makes, only to regret almost all of them. I get very little sense of personality from Efe, which made it hard for me to understand anything she did (or didn’t do).

I also found the ending to be extremely (unnecessarily) jarring and haphazardly thrown in…I can’t understand why the book would end this way aside from shock value.

I think the premise itself is interesting and the book held my attention; I just needed the characters’ chemistry to be more believable and would’ve liked to have gotten a bit more into Efe’s interior life because there really was no understanding of how she was reasoning through her decisions.

Content Warnings