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mar's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Confinement, Physical abuse, and Violence
Moderate: Death and Gore
frantic_vampire's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
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? No
4.0
This was a really fun read! I honestly don’t know why I waited so long to read it. I loved Perle and Dejean so much! I loved getting to see the queerplatonic relationship that developed between them over the course of the book. They made this beautiful connection that led to them making a pod based on trust and a willingness to help those that need a place to recover or rest or that need a home. They just kind of started collecting people little by little. I also loved just how queer this whole book was! It was really nice. Our Bloody Pearl is getting a four out of five stars from me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Gore, Kidnapping, Murder, Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Death, Body horror, Confinement, Torture, Trafficking, and Panic attacks/disorders
Moderate: Animal cruelty and Ableism
puttingwingsonwords's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
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
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Confinement, Murder, Physical abuse, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Kidnapping
Moderate: Gore
Minor: Sexual violence
beforeviolets's review
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
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? It's complicated
3.5
This book was essentially How To Train Your Dragon but from the POV of Toothless.
But also if there was a romance between Toothless and Hiccup.
And also if Toothless ate people and... was a siren.
Through the perspective of a nonbinary siren, this book takes us through the mental and physical journey of gaining a disability and learning to live with it.
Our main character, Perle, travels the path of mourning a life once loved in order to adjust to a completely new way of living. They find themself relying on those they would once consider enemies and having to redefine their understanding of freedom, independence, and strength. Over the course of this book, they learn to not only accept, but thrive, in their new reality, and through this are able to pave the way to a future that is better than one they could’ve ever imagined before their disability.
The characters were enjoyable, I thought the pacing was fairly well done, and I think the length was just perfect for the story that needed to be told. I will say, the high intensity moments were quite a bit repetitive, and after the third time the LI got knocked unconscious, the "is he alive??" moment we were meant to have as an audience lost its power. It just needed a bit of variety. I also felt that the romance element could've been a bit more cathartic towards the end, as I felt there was quite a bit of build and then just a brief little discussion about it in the final moments. But I did love the clarification of the quality of their relationship.
It's a really sweet story of healing, second chances, and creating support systems one can call family.
CW/TW: gore, blood, violence, injury detail, death, murder, imprisonment, gun violence, drowning, medical content, PTSD, paraplegia, emesis, physical abuse, sexual abuse (mention, past)
But also if there was a romance between Toothless and Hiccup.
And also if Toothless ate people and... was a siren.
Through the perspective of a nonbinary siren, this book takes us through the mental and physical journey of gaining a disability and learning to live with it.
Our main character, Perle, travels the path of mourning a life once loved in order to adjust to a completely new way of living. They find themself relying on those they would once consider enemies and having to redefine their understanding of freedom, independence, and strength. Over the course of this book, they learn to not only accept, but thrive, in their new reality, and through this are able to pave the way to a future that is better than one they could’ve ever imagined before their disability.
The characters were enjoyable, I thought the pacing was fairly well done, and I think the length was just perfect for the story that needed to be told. I will say, the high intensity moments were quite a bit repetitive, and after the third time the LI got knocked unconscious, the "is he alive??" moment we were meant to have as an audience lost its power. It just needed a bit of variety. I also felt that the romance element could've been a bit more cathartic towards the end, as I felt there was quite a bit of build and then just a brief little discussion about it in the final moments. But I did love the clarification of the quality of their relationship.
It's a really sweet story of healing, second chances, and creating support systems one can call family.
CW/TW: gore, blood, violence, injury detail, death, murder, imprisonment, gun violence, drowning, medical content, PTSD, paraplegia, emesis, physical abuse, sexual abuse (mention, past)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Gore, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, and Violence
Moderate: Murder, Physical abuse, Medical content, and Death
Minor: Sexual assault and Vomit
numerous_bees's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
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? No
4.5
I thought the author's decision to write from the point of view of a (non-human) character who actively wants to eat human organs was a bold choice, but within a dozen pages, I'm completely on Pearle's side.
Our narrator has a very strong voice and a definite worldview that makes working out what she's talking about sometimes tricky but often rewarding. Human artefacts are sketched in the sparest possible detail, which can be frustrating - ships can fly, I think, but Pearle doesn't care so we never find out - but it's consistent and feels true to the character. We spend most our time in Pearl's head and she's got a lot to think about as she navigates her misconceptions and biases, and the reasons that sirens and humans have been literally at each others' throats for generations.
Other reviewers have commented that Kian is a fairly weak antagonist, but she casts a long shadow and Pearle spends a lot of the book struggling with the physical and psychological aftermath of the abuse Kian subjected them to. When they finally, inevitablely, meet in the third act, that fear overcomes Pearle in a horribly realistic way; the reality of their abuser is so much worse than the memory.
The only downsides for me were a fairly clunky paragraph where Dejean explains the spectrum of human sexuality and pronoun use, and a somewhat passive build up to the climax, comprising Pearle mostly yelling Dejean's name while he did stuff around them.
The "pronoun talk" is perhaps more of a product of the age of the book; I thought it was inelegant and stood out in contrast to the casual acceptance of queerness throughout, but it was brief and no real harm done. The passivity in the buildup to the finale may well be a realistic reflection of the paralysing terror in confronting an abuser and the freeze/fawn reaction, but it was a little frustrating to see the brilliant, ferocious Pearle nearly damselled in their own story.
But these really are more or less minor criticisms, given disproportionate weight by how much I enjoyed the rest of my time with this book.
Overall, I liked it. I'd recommend it to friends and I'd read it again. Storygraph has listed three other publications by this author, two of which are set in Pearle's world and which I'll be adding to my TBR pile imminently.
Our narrator has a very strong voice and a definite worldview that makes working out what she's talking about sometimes tricky but often rewarding. Human artefacts are sketched in the sparest possible detail, which can be frustrating - ships can fly, I think, but Pearle doesn't care so we never find out - but it's consistent and feels true to the character. We spend most our time in Pearl's head and she's got a lot to think about as she navigates her misconceptions and biases, and the reasons that sirens and humans have been literally at each others' throats for generations.
Other reviewers have commented that Kian is a fairly weak antagonist, but she casts a long shadow and Pearle spends a lot of the book struggling with the physical and psychological aftermath of the abuse Kian subjected them to. When they finally, inevitablely, meet in the third act, that fear overcomes Pearle in a horribly realistic way; the reality of their abuser is so much worse than the memory.
The only downsides for me were a fairly clunky paragraph where Dejean explains the spectrum of human sexuality and pronoun use, and a somewhat passive build up to the climax, comprising Pearle mostly yelling Dejean's name while he did stuff around them.
The "pronoun talk" is perhaps more of a product of the age of the book; I thought it was inelegant and stood out in contrast to the casual acceptance of queerness throughout, but it was brief and no real harm done. The passivity in the buildup to the finale may well be a realistic reflection of the paralysing terror in confronting an abuser and the freeze/fawn reaction, but it was a little frustrating to see the brilliant, ferocious Pearle nearly damselled in their own story.
But these really are more or less minor criticisms, given disproportionate weight by how much I enjoyed the rest of my time with this book.
Overall, I liked it. I'd recommend it to friends and I'd read it again. Storygraph has listed three other publications by this author, two of which are set in Pearle's world and which I'll be adding to my TBR pile imminently.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Physical abuse, and Confinement
Moderate: Death and Panic attacks/disorders
Minor: Death of parent and Sexual assault
cheye13's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
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? No
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Kidnapping, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Confinement, Torture, and Death
Moderate: Ableism, Murder, and Gore
Minor: Death of parent and Trafficking
It's hard to align this story with typical warnings, as the sirens aren't human, but aren't fully animal. The majority of the content warnings apply to the treatment of sirens, mostly predictable from the synopsis.minervacerridwen's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
relaxing
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? Yes
3.0
At the start of the book I'd have given Our Bloody Pearl 4 stars, but in the second half only 2 - though I did like the very end. I think I didn't quite have the right expectations for this story after seeing several people say that this was a comfort read for them; it turned out to contain a lot more persistent violence and torture than I expected from that description. However, let's start with the things I loved: the story pulled me in right from the start, and I immediately liked the main character and the way the "foreign" siren logic was presented in first-person pov. The other characters were also likeable and I felt we got to know them very quickly, which helped to connect to the story right away. The first half of the book was very easy to read and the fast pace kept me intrigued. And of course there's a lot of queer representation: the sirens having different views on gender than humans, as well as ace, trans, polyam, and F/F representation among the humans. I discovered the book through GreatAce.Club, so that was awesome!
But somewhere about halfway, there was an event in the story that made me like the main character less.Namely, Perle makes the selfish decision of returning to the cove with the humans very soon after another siren, Storm, hurt Dejean. I'm not a siren and yet I realised that surely Storm would still be there, but Perle was apparently happy to risk the lives of their human 'pod'. This really bothered me because it could so easily have been avoided!
From that point on, we were thrown from one action scene to the next fight and yet another threat, and perhaps it was because it took me a long while to find time to read again, but it no longer felt to me like the intriguing series of events that it had been at the start. I was happy when the end of the story was in sight. Still, the story had a proper climax, and I think it's impressive that the writer pulled that off after so many other action scenes! But all in all, I think the second half of the book simply didn't come at the right time for me to read.
But somewhere about halfway, there was an event in the story that made me like the main character less.
From that point on, we were thrown from one action scene to the next fight and yet another threat, and perhaps it was because it took me a long while to find time to read again, but it no longer felt to me like the intriguing series of events that it had been at the start. I was happy when the end of the story was in sight. Still, the story had a proper climax, and I think it's impressive that the writer pulled that off after so many other action scenes! But all in all, I think the second half of the book simply didn't come at the right time for me to read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Torture
Moderate: Death
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