Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

90 reviews

lilybees's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, Emotional abuse, Rape, Blood, and Death

Moderate: Drug use, Addiction, and Physical abuse

deetabz's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Medical content, Toxic relationship, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, and Murder

Moderate: Blood, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Classism, Homophobia, Torture, Lesbophobia, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Religious bigotry, and Grief

Minor: Sexual content, War, and Racism

widowrites's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

5.0

This book absolutely blew me away. I love a complicated character who isn’t perfect and this story nails that. The premise itself is interesting and it’s executed brilliantly. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror and Classism

Minor: Sexual content, Child death, Physical abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Emotional abuse, Murder, Toxic relationship, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Addiction

tangleroot_eli's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

It's only March, but the books I read for the rest of 2024 will have a hard fight to unseat this one as my favorite of the year.

Johnson's worldbuilding is exquisite. I got attached to her characters within paragraphs of their introductions. Her portrayals of classism, racism, and colonialism felt like constant gut-punches. If Spouse weren't waiting to read it before we have to return this copy to the library, I might've flipped right back to the beginning and started reading it again the moment I finished it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Death, Domestic abuse, Murder, Physical abuse, and Classism

Moderate: Blood, Body horror, Gore, Child abuse, Addiction, Homophobia, Violence, Vomit, Child death, Confinement, Medical content, Racism, Death of parent, Deportation, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Kidnapping, Suicide, Gun violence, War, Suicidal thoughts, Religious bigotry, and Miscarriage

Graphic: Environmental degradation Minor: Whorephobia, Child labor

sakeriver's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-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

5.0

It’s always surprising—pleasantly so—to read a story in a familiar subgenre that feels like something you’ve never read before. Multiverse stories all (or almost all) have in common an exploration of identity, of what makes us is. And this one does that, of course, but it stands out for the distinctive voice of its protagonist, and the way she moves not just between worlds, but within the world she inhabits.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Toxic relationship, and Violence

katieandkiri's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark reflective 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? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, and Death

Moderate: Body horror

un_savoury's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense 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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Death, and Classism

Moderate: Toxic relationship

Minor: Death of parent

athnyx230's review against another edition

reflective 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Domestic abuse, Toxic relationship, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Child death, Death of parent, War, and Blood

Minor: Miscarriage

thenextbookdilemma's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective 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

5.0

Where do I even start with this book?

First it stretches your mind, as I think is always the case when parallel universes are explored. This idea challenges our very existences and always throws me for a loop

I, like many of you (probably…maybe?) have considered on multiple occasions the question of, how might my life have been different if X had gone differently, or if I hadn’t met Y, or if Z had happened ? Well, Cara knows the answer to that question in 372 different worlds. 

A very brief summary: This book is about multiverse travel. A woman has died on 372 different parallel universes and thus is able to visit them and gather data for her home earth. But soon she discovers that she is involved in something far more nefarious than expected. 

I LOVED this book. The characters and all their iterations were so interesting and human. The worlds were well-developed and captivating. There were multiple plot twists and a romance subplot that I adored. The writing was beautiful and impressive especially for a debut!

But this book also makes you think about who you are, and who you could have been. 

Would I be the same person if my circumstances had been different? Johnson says no, and I agree. We are not our circumstances, but we are not unaffected by them. Who might you become if your means of survival are not provided to you? How can we judge somebody who has to fight to survive, who lacks the same amount of security as we do? Who doesn’t know where their next meal or a roof over their head is coming from? It’s a reminder that the family you are born into, the class, the race, the place, is all just luck. And that very truth can be humbling or infuriating or devastating. I loved the way Johnson wove these questions of equity and classism into a gorgeous multiverse novel and I will long think about all the Emmas I could have been or perhaps, all the different Emmas I am parallel to this one. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Classism, Gore, Physical abuse, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Racism

Minor: Child death, Suicide, Addiction, Child abuse, and Lesbophobia

schnaucl's review against another edition

adventurous dark sad 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? It's complicated

4.0

This wasn't quite what I expected.  I was expecting it to be set on contemporary earth or maybe the near future.   That was probably my fault for making an assumption and this misalignment of expectations may have influenced how I felt about the book.

The idea that travel is limited to a few hundred worlds because otherwise they're too dissimilar to the traveler's world (and that they can start closely aligned enough for travel but become misaligned enough to make it impossible) is interesting.   And it doesn't seem tied to the particular traveler, the present circumstances of the Earth as a whole has to be pretty similar.    Consequently, most people's circumstances are pretty similar from world to world.   It's certainly different from most alternate reality books where someone tries on various lives completely different from their own (only to realize the life they'd been living was the best one all along).   It does mean that big historical moments and conditions have to be somewhat similar.  For example, just as a world with nuclear war would take itself out of alignment, so would one with much greater  equality, where some of the biggest problems have been solved. 

There's also some romance to it, the notion that the same people come together across multiple worlds.  Of course, those relationships aren't always healthy sometimes they're quite toxic.  

But mostly, of course, it's about exploiting other worlds.   Obtaining resources the prime world can't (or won't) extract on its own.    And letting things play out on other worlds so they can decide what to do (or not) on their own.   It's not quite clear how the data the travelers retrieve is gathered, but I suppose that's a minor detail.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Colonisation, Death, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Murder, Gore, Physical abuse, and Domestic abuse