Reviews with content warning for Death - Shutter

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Shutter by Ramona Emerson

32 reviews

bluegrassreader's review against another edition

mysterious 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

4.5

Picked this up on a whim and it became one of my favorite books ever. As a photographer I love how much that was an aspect of the story and of the central character. I really enjoyed Emerson’s writing style, and found that the book had some very poignant things to say about life, loss, grief and death.

I found the relationship between Rita and her Grandmother to be very touching and relatable. I also enjoyed the way the book explored Native American culture and some of the good and bad things about life on a reservation in today’s time. A very good book. Excited to see the author’s future work.

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linnyb's review against another edition

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dark 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

4.0

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awebofstories's review against another edition

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dark 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

4.0

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mmccombs's review

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dark mysterious medium-paced

3.0

I’m really sad I didn’t like this one more! I enjoyed the premise and was interested by Rita’s relationship with death, complicated by seeing ghosts and her cultural understanding of it. However, I just don’t think the structure or pacing worked. I think switching between the present and the past makes sense for a novel like this, but I don’t think they worked together well in this case. The flashbacks didn’t reach a climax that related to or expanded on what was happening in the present, in fact I feel like it dampened the impact of the action occurring in the present. Things kind of just dragged along until suddenly tons of plot was happening all at once, it didn’t really make sense to me. It was still generally fun to read, but I leave it feeling disappointed.

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lisaarnsdorf's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Having heard several interviews with the author, I was expecting a pretty gruesome book; she sure delivered. The opening was almost shocking in its explicit descriptions of a murder scene.

Overall, I really liked this book. My main complaints are: 1) the author uses an alternating timeline, with every other chapter being in the past and the present. As the two timelines converged, I started to get really confused about where we were in time. And the past timeline dragged on a little too long. 2) The ending was morally ambiguous and too convenient. It felt like a cop-out in some regards.

I hope this becomes a series because it's a really interesting premise!

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