Reviews with content warning for Child death - More Than This

Reviews tagging 'Child death'

More Than This by Patrick Ness

73 reviews

frostythewhale's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

Gripping and such a great mystery, right up until Part 3. Ending was open ended and not the sort I like in such a long mysterious book.

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loveclairebearx's review against another edition

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slow-paced

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

2.5

I wanted…more than this.

(Obligatory book club read I struggled through.)

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grave_liminal's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-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

3.75

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wathav's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

Starts out slow, builds exponentially
Excellent read

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comfsp's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense

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

3.75

Overall a quite enjoyable read, however the end felt waay too rushed.

one one hand i get that the whole story was like 'there are things that have a secondary meaning and things you have to take at face value and you'll never know what is what because it's life and life is unpredictable' but on the other hand i feel like the author started one too many twists and didn't know how to resolve them.

also gay people never getting a happy end is so normalized in media that every time Gudmund did something sweet (and he did plenty of that, he's a nice guy) i got sooo suspicious at him. i literally have a note at page 79 at 'not unless they were forced. not unless someone forced them.' saying GUDMUND!!!4! lol

the other thing i did not really like about this was the way the author kept trying to spoon-feed us the moral of the story over and over again, using this random little Polish child as his spokesman. at times it got really comical. i guess i can see why he was trying to get his ideas across like that, like kids can sometimes have really nuanced and interesting viewpoints adults don't often think about, but at times it felt like he was kind of self-aware of this fact and even made fun of it. other times not so much.
and these ideas were sooo repetitive, they came up over and over and got discussed way too many times
HATE the ending though

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jace_lee_koe's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

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gbthemango's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.5

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maya_b's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective sad 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

I switched between German and English for this one and think both are pretty great. I enjoyed the story a lot.

I really liked Seth as a character, loved how reflective and emotional especially the first half of the book was, and I liked how all of it worked together. For some reason I still had to fight to pick the book up every now and then, because even though I loved everything about it, it kind of exhausted me to read it, but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad book. Not at all.

Even though it sure as hell isn’t what I expected. I don’t even know why, the blurb even compared the story to

Matrix and Inception

(on my version at least), so I most definitely should have seen all of that coming, but just nothing else (least of all the very calm green cover of somebody watching the sea) prepared me for everything after the first Part of the book, and so it took me completely by surprise. But somehow it worked.

The book feels like it changes the Genre completely after the first part, and suddenly it’s from this very slow and reflective pace and a person trying to process their life and accept their choices to a science fiction novel with fights and the world ending and stuff, and I feel like it should have taken me out of the whole situation, but it didn’t. It felt right for it to take this path.

Seth was a great main character, and I love him. He makes mistakes, is pretty self-centered (a lot, at least, not always), but also he was really lovely and it felt like he was right. Yeah, he did stupid stuff, and yeah, maybe he did make rash decisions, and maybe it wasn’t all about him and he shouldn’t have done some stuff or assumed some things, but … it made sense, for his character, to be that way, and it made sense why he felt like he felt, and with all his problems and flaws he was still great.

Same goes for Tomasz, who’s by far my favorite (he had to go through so much, and he’s so strong, and yet he still manages to be happy, and to fight for his happiness, and he’s trying to make everyone feel better, and I just love that strong little fighter so much, you have no idea!), and of course Regine, too. She’s also great. A little cold, but as much a fighter as the rest, and she tries too, and god, do I love that she knows what she wants. Yeah, she’s judgmental (of course she is) and she probably could try to be better, but it’s so obvious where she’s coming from, and it made just as much sense for her to be the way she was as it made for the rest of them, and I just love all the characters.

I also liked all of the stories and the people connected to them, and it was really interesting to get to know the world all of them lived in. Also really liked the conclusion of all of it, and to get to know what happened together with the characters, and my heart absolutely broke a few times, and I very much did almost cry a few times, too, but it still felt like a nice story. And even though it got very dark at times, and so sad, it never felt too much for me. It was always quite balanced, in my opinion, and actually had quite a hopeful feel to it a lot of the time (even though it was very hopeless at other times).

The only thing I didn’t like about the book, was the ending. Or I like the ending, actually, but I didn’t like where it ended. I really wanted to know just a little bit more of what would happen next.

Mostly because from the beginning there was nothing I wanted more than for the parents to actually actively realize that maybe they have two kids and one of those kids doesn’t feel like his parents care all that much, and I really wanted to see them at least starting to work through all of that.

But it did work, and I’m not really disappointing or anything because most of the stuff was there, and I like where all the characters ended up (for now).

Had a lot of fun with that story. Really surprising, didn’t know what I’d get myself into, and maybe shouldn’t have worked, but somehow did. For me at least. But also I like slow books, and you have to get through a lot of slow scenes, before it speeds up quite a lot, so probably not for everyone.

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madelinesedai's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense slow-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

3.5

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criticalmiss's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

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

4.5

4.5 ⭐️ (spoilers ahead)
This book had me guessing and it really shifted as you went along. The first part was a bit slow as Seth was alone and trying to figure out what this work was all about but once you hit part 2 and onwards it picks up.
Once you find out that it might be a simulation they woke up from, it gave me a bit of Matrix vibes (real world vs the online one) I enjoyed the bond between Seth, Regine and Tomasz, I believed it. And the Driver was a great villain? Entity? And you never quite know all the answers
TW: suicide, death, child abuse, child death, lgbtq harassment

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