Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Hurricane Summer

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield

45 reviews

minamina's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

You could feel the passion the author put in her words. I could identify myself in a lot of matters Tilla dealt with and the first half, I really liked how the author portrayed Tilla‘s processing of thoughts. The torn feeling of belonging to a place you’re not familiar with realllyyyy got elaborated perfectly here. Tilla doesn’t have a place to call home yet and she tries and tries and TRIES to find it in a country that seems to reject her. I get that.
Still, many things became irritating.
First of all, the dialogue seemed unnatural. And I do not mean by the local people, but by the protagonist herself. If teenagers talked like that, you’d laugh into their face. Additionally, the sentences began to feel so dramatic that I had to scrunch my noise. There is a thin line between poetic and cheesy, and sadly I think this book hit the latter one. Plus, the word beautiful was used many times as something significant, and it was cool at first but felt bland after the forth time.
Not one of the characters were redeemable and I had to ask myself countless times if there is anything good in Tilla‘s stay.
Severe and fragile issues such as rape were incredibly overlooked.

Spoiler:

Tilla didn’t even process what has happened. I’m not telling the character how to handle it since it’s individual, but at least one paragraph to digest what has happened would be better than add rape merely for the plot.
Many things happened for the plot, actually. A certain death to the end, for example. It crushed me and broke the single speck of hope for the ending of the book. I repeat, nothing was redeemable in this book. Everything was irreversible. And still, Tilla concludes it like it’s a positive thing, which sounds like an extreme amount of denial here.

All the characters that did her wrong still didn’t get what they deserve. Only the good ones got the worst fates. And I wonder why? You can’t call this „life“ by putting all the hard ship in a few pages and gloss over them, and process them as „beautiful destructions“.
And Hessan. I had a bad feeling throughout, their love quickened and seemed imbalanced. There was no space to second guess his intentions with her. Since the narrator, Tilla, fell head over heels for him I started to enjoy their relationship, until—guess what—it got destructed to its core.
Again, this isn’t „life“, this is just something that has been added to spice up the plot.
At least she didn’t forgive him.

Content Warnings

lovereadingxo's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad medium-paced

3.0

In this own voices, coming-of-age novel, we meet Tilla - an 18-year-old who has spent most of her life yearning for the love of a father who keeps leaving their family for his homeland, Jamaica. And as the story begins, that's where Tilla and her little sister Mia are headed for the summer.

Her time there will prove to be life-changing, and the novel gets real dark, real quick. It touches on many heavy topics – colourism, slut shaming, s*xual assault, death – but it isn’t done with enough finesse to make the reader feel like there’s a balance to the time Tilla spends in Jamaica.

So many things go wrong, and there’s the constant looming threat of the hurricane, so it’s hard to really see the beauty in the novel, the country.

“This place… this land… it’s been paradise. But it’s also been poison.”

I love how much Patois is used, and while the author provides a ‘word bank’, I didn’t need it – the context usually made it clear. Maybe that’s why it frustrated me so much that Tilla – whose father supposedly spoke Patois all the time – constantly kept asking “what does that mean?”

But that’s only one of many things that made her character hard to connect with.

Granted, Tilla has lived a mostly sheltered life, but you're telling me that nothing has toughened her up, even a little bit? She can’t bring herself to say ‘no’, even when she really should.

The only times Tilla truly stands up for herself is to her father and aunt, and those circumstances felt... over the top. Like the author was trying to make up for what a pushover she’d been.

Tilla also seems much younger than 18. If she was 15, I would have found ‘Hurricane Summer’ more believable and enjoyable.

Other issues: The big plot twist towards the end felt completely gratuitous, no one suffers consequences for their actions and the author tends to overwrite, especially towards the end.

What I liked: The setting and its vibrancy, Tilla and Andre’s friendship, and how authentic it all felt.

There were touching moments and I found the novel interesting, but I really wanted to love it and I just didn’t.

Content Warnings

jooniethemoonie's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.5

It's quite long but hard hitting. Brings you on the journey of a girl learning to stand for herself, in a country that runs through her bones but does not welcome her.

Content Warnings