Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Sundial by Catriona Ward

63 reviews

sasisaskia's review

dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy, Animal death, Toxic relationship, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Death of parent, Drug use, Animal cruelty, Emotional abuse, Domestic abuse, and Child abuse

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

wperdue92's review

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

5.0

Total mind f. I’m mad at myself for not seeing the ending. Serious book hangover now 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Child abuse, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Animal death, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Blood, and Animal cruelty

asolis's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Child death, Confinement, Animal death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Animal cruelty, Blood, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Violence, and Mental illness

Moderate: Suicide attempt, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, and Grief

heartofhorrors's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Death

Moderate: Child abuse, Gore, Grief, Infidelity, Abandonment, Blood, Confinement, Murder, and Violence

Minor: Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Miscarriage, Alcohol, Drug use, Torture, and Trafficking

annahsmallwood's review

dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

I couldn't put this book down. Every time I thought I knew what was going to happen, I was proven so incredibly wrong. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic relationship, Animal death, Domestic abuse, and Mental illness

Moderate: Child abuse and Child death

reggiethebird's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.5

It's a thriller, alright. Vivid imagery throughout, and the plot twists and turns till the very last page. Plot twists can sometimes feel unearned, but I think here they were all reasonable, and nothing felt too out of place by the end.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Animal cruelty, Kidnapping, Gore, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Child abuse, Mental illness, Violence, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Addiction, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Animal death, Confinement, Death, and Trafficking

Moderate: Trafficking, Bullying, Gun violence, Self harm, and Vomit

leahopkins's review against another edition

dark tense fast-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

5.0

I picked this book up more by chance, but I am really glad I did. It is less of a horror book and more of a slightly bizarre thriller with some paranormal tones (?), but it was still captivating from start to finish!
The characters are all very fleshed out and layered, they are all pretty unlikable (except maybe Mia), and literally none of them are good people. Still, you can understand why they do the shit they do (to some extent at least), so that made me hate them less.
There are so many themes/images used again throughout the story (mirrors, maggots, clocks) which made the whole writing very cohesive. The author was also very good at leaving small clues everywhere (especially in the Arrowood chapters), but mixing them up with red herrings. I was so captured, putting tabs on everything I thought was important to the plot, and writing down all my new theories. Most of them were wrong. But I loved going through all of my notes again and understanding what they were really alluding to.
Most of the twists were very surprising, but made so much sense at the same time (I said "ohhhh" way too many times). The only twist I really didn't like was the last one (

aka Annie being the evil child and not Callie

), I felt like it undid a lot of what the author had established before. I almost lowered the rating because of this, but since it was literally just in the last chapter, I decided to just pretend like it never happened. At some points, I also thought the overall topic of what is happening at Sundial seemed a little far-fetched, but reading the Author's note and seeing it was based on actual events, I feel like that critique can't hold itself. Overall, there were a couple of those little moments where I thought "is this realistic?", so maybe 5 stars is a little too generous of me, but I really, really enjoyed the reading experience, so I feel like they are justified.

 

Also I have a theory I will not budge on and that I just need to put out somewhere: Callie kept talking about Rob touching her eyes as if adjusting contact lenses, even though she doesn't wear them. And in one chapter, it says something about Rob thinking about getting coloured contacts and just continue living as Jack. I don't care what anyone says, I think Rob is actually Jack who just pretends to be Rob, because Rob was killed by 23. I will die on that hill. 

PS: please note the content warnings because there are a lot!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Murder, Physical abuse, Child abuse, Animal death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Animal cruelty, and Violence

Moderate: Drug use, Miscarriage, Infidelity, and Mental illness

Minor: Adult/minor relationship and Panic attacks/disorders

thegayestghost's review

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-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: Child death, Domestic abuse, Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Violence, and Animal death

Moderate: Addiction, Vomit, Kidnapping, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Cursing, Gaslighting, Blood, Toxic relationship, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Medical content, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, and Death