Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Sundial by Catriona Ward

43 reviews

jesselyn's review

dark sad medium-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? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Child abuse, Blood, Toxic relationship, Gore, Death, Confinement, Mental illness, Infidelity, Grief, Drug use, Addiction, Self harm, Death of parent, Violence, Misogyny, Miscarriage, Drug abuse, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Pregnancy, Emotional abuse, Domestic abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Injury/Injury detail, and Gaslighting

ehoustonmyatt's review

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Death, Child abuse, Child death, Drug abuse, Violence, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Drug use, Addiction, Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Trafficking, Animal death, Miscarriage, Blood, Confinement, Infidelity, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, and Toxic relationship

hellokatya's review

adventurous challenging emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.75

the only reason this doesn’t have a 5 star rating is because it did have some lulls in it — otherwise, this book is beautiful. would highly recommend. 
beautiful tale of mother and daughter, of sisters, and escaping the path that’s been laid out for you. so gorgeous please read it 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Adult/minor relationship, Abandonment, Violence, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Animal death, Confinement, Blood, and Drug abuse

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Body horror, Pregnancy, and Child death

Minor: Kidnapping

selkelite's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.25

A good fun read, somewhat marred by the comparison to Needless Street, Catriona’s previous and far better outing. 

Having read a couple of her other novels, it’s interesting to note just how obsessed she is with siblings, especially siblings who swap places in the plot and hide deep dark secrets about their relationship with each other. I’m not sure the ‘twists’ here were entirely successful — but I did feel the characters strongly as whole people, which is impressive when the plot is quite so outlandish as it is here. 

Side note: this book needs an enormous trigger warning for animal cruelty and animal death.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Domestic abuse

aformeracceleratedreader's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad medium-paced

4.0

Please check trigger/content warnings. 
Quite enjoyed this. The twists and turns kept me interested along with the sister dynamic. Will def be checking out more from the author. 
If you choose to listen to audio with the ebook, just a heads-up some wording is different from each other. Minor differences but could potentially throw someone off 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Blood, Miscarriage, Medical content, Pregnancy, Domestic abuse, Grief, Infidelity, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Death of parent, Drug use, Gaslighting, and Violence

Moderate: Trafficking, Vomit, Kidnapping, Self harm, Torture, Confinement, Cursing, Abandonment, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Medical content, and Child death

Minor: Murder

seekaymack's review

challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Drug abuse, Child abuse, and Miscarriage

illtakethenightshiftx's review against another edition

dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

4.0

I wasn’t expecting to love this as much as I did because I wasn’t the biggest fan of The Last House on Needless Street, but I enjoyed Sundial immensely. It’s weird, foreboding, eerie, and heart wrenching. 

I like a dual POV and it extremely effective in this story and really sucked me in - I read the last half of this book in one night. This book is DARK and it just gets darker as the story progresses and the ending will both crush you and possibly make you feel like Dani at the end of Midsommar.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Violence, and Animal cruelty

Moderate: Mental illness and Drug abuse

livlamentloathe's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious 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

4.0

Until Rob and Callie got to Sundial and the flashback story started, I thought this was going to be an ableist story about mental illness. But it’s not that simple. It’s twisty in an unpredictable way. There’s enough going on that I was tricked into not knowing what would happen next! I’m typically ahead of the twist and find myself disappointed to have been right. But book isn’t about “a twist.” It’s not even a multitude of twists, although kinda. It’s a whole lot of fucked up normality that stewed in the heated desert of Sundial until finally… you know.

This was a very long book, and I wasn’t interested at turns. I put Baby Teeth down for the very reasons I didn’t enjoy the start of Sundial. But this story swerved past the ease of mom and daughter dislike each other. It kept going and going and going. When you think you know the truth, there’s still more buried. And ya know, isn’t that just the way (of people)? We’re all more complex than what others see us as. Callie doesn’t know everything about Rob, and Rob doesn’t know everything that is Callie, or Jack, or even Annie. The only simple thing is Irving. Trust a man to be violent and predictable. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Physical abuse, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Mental illness

Moderate: Self harm, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicide attempt, Violence, Animal death, Infidelity, and Physical abuse

Minor: Death, Drug abuse, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, and Murder

keirahelena_'s review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

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

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Drug abuse, and Domestic abuse

annie_reads_books's review against another edition

dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Animal cruelty, Death, Child abuse, Death of parent, Toxic relationship, and Torture

Moderate: Drug use, Confinement, Pregnancy, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Murder, Miscarriage, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, Domestic abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Infidelity, and Gore