Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

17 reviews

genevievecollum's review

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective relaxing sad slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Sexual content, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Death of parent, and Cursing

junji_ito_hoe's review

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad 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

4.5

I picked this book up by chance. I was intrigued by Salley Rooney after hearing about her beloved writing style. Normal people was on my radar, however, when I attended the books store I saw that Beautiful World, Where Are You was on sale and this short but enjoyable experience began. I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I stayed up all night one night in an attempt to finish this before my eyes grew drowsy around 3 am. I was invested in the relationships between the characters from chapter 3. In addition to this, I found that at times the character dynamics fell flat and came off as superficial and recycled. Alice was my least favorite character because she was very pretentious and exasperating at times, however, I can see her appeal and how others might relate to her.

Towards the end, Alice appeared to be on a high-horse believing that she was superior to our other main characters and their mediocre jobs while also believing that her life is significantly harder than Eileen's when the circumstances are not comparable in that form

. Simon was a confusing character because it was unclear how Rooney was attempting to portray him…Creepy or Caring? I also felt that Felix was an underdeveloped character and he felt more like the dumb character who is just around to say something smart every once in a while. The emails every second chapter were too over-polished to be believable as two friends talking. I found the topics discussed in the emails interesting because they gave us as readers insight into who Eileen and Alice are and their motivations. Overall I did enjoy this book and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys contemporary fiction and doesn’t mind the sexual content.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Alcohol, Mental illness, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Death, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, and Pregnancy

storykath's review

emotional hopeful reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness and Sexual content

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Self harm, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Abortion, Chronic illness, Emotional abuse, Blood, and Drug use

amelreads's review

emotional funny relaxing 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcohol, Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, and Drug use

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Chronic illness, and Toxic relationship

majeczka_'s review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

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

3.25

Unfortunately pretty underwhelming, even a bit disappointing.
The main characters were boring, the very long emails (beauty? Jesus? bronze age???) were unnecessarily pseudo-deep and don't get me started on the many many many sex scenes that did not bring anything to the story!
I'm a big fan of Conversations with friends and liked normal people very much, but this story lacked the rawness and the effortless flow that I loved so much about Rooney's other novels.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Mental illness

Moderate: Drug use, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Cursing, and Blood

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Vomit, Suicidal thoughts, Pregnancy, Death of parent, Cancer, and Bullying

hmatt's review against another edition

challenging reflective slow-paced

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

3.5

I feel like I echo all the reviews I've seen for this book when I say it falls solidly between Sally Rooney's first two novels for me.

From a literary perspective: there are several gorgeous quotable lines/paragraphs snuck into the emails Eileen and Alice exchange. But from a contemporary perspective: really? We're really going to push the envelope of believability by having the main characters exchanging long, flowery, well-composed emails? Who does that? Perhaps this is just my own experience coming to the fore. I didn't find that the emails fit naturally into the narrative, though. It felt more like the author wanted to discuss specific topics and didn't have a better way of integrating them into the story. In that way, this felt like two separate books.

I wanted so much more from the characters, and I'm frustrated because I could see in the text that the author had developed them but was prioritizing the goddamn emails over the plot. Please, give me a whole book on Felix's life and escapades pre-Alice. I also love that, when she does choose to focus on the narrative, Rooney describes every little thing that happens. Every time a character picks up their phone to aimlessly scroll, she tells us about it.

One nitpick on the characters, though: I found the male main characters to be a bit too flawless. It seems like the author tried to write from a wholly omniscient perspective at times (I don't think I'll go too deep into how weird the narrative voice changes throughout the book were in this review...), but ended up still "favouring" Alice and Eileen's perspectives... and these characters were ultra self-critical while not being very critical of Felix or Simon.

On the whole, it does feel a bit like Rooney was trying to please both the Conversations with Friends and the Normal People crowds with how this third novel jumps between the introspective and the interpersonal relationships. It has some interesting things to say, though, and I think it's worth a read.

Also I was tempted to bump up my star rating just for the sheer fact that she throws the pandemic in there at the end. Like, it's been going on for nearly 2 years, let's start to include it in more contemporary fiction okay??! Brilliant.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcohol and Sexual content

Minor: Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, and Suicidal thoughts

nialiversuch's review

emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Infertility

Moderate: Alcohol, Cursing, Drug use, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Adult/minor relationship, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Death of parent, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Religious bigotry, and Toxic relationship