Reviews tagging 'Cancer'

Umacı'nın Peşinde by Richard Chizmar

2 reviews

minimicropup's review against another edition

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dark emotional 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? No

4.0

Setting the Scene: 🇺🇸 The town of Edgewood, Maryland
POV: We are reading a true crime and memoir from the author’s perspective as they revisit their youth and the dark events that unfolded in their hometown. 
 
Mood Reading Match-Up:
-Metafiction memoir (in a non-fiction style)
-Coming of age nostalgia, friendship, serial killer whodunnit, not all was as it seemed
-True crime alternative history 
-Exploring themes around nostalgia, memory, growing up, self-preservation, true crime consumption, community, life experience, investigation, motivations, and mystery  
 
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🐺 Growls, Howls, and Tail Wags 🐕
 
🗣️ Tale-Telling: This was a cool narrative style I haven’t read before – it’s part memoir, part fiction, but it’s meant to be read as a true crime book pretending it covers real cases. It was like a high-end meta approach that initially sounded self-centered, but nope. The first-person narrative from the author’s perspective added a personal touch that didn’t feel narcissistic so the events felt more intimate and impactful. It is part memoir (and some of the memoir is truth since it’s the author writing themselves into this alternate universe). The audio was great, although the narrator didn't have a wide range for doing the voices so everyone sounded the same in voice (not in dialogue). Also, if you’re here for crime fiction only, then some parts could feel a bit like when podcast hosts chat a lot ahead of their topic. 
 
👥 Characters: The characters felt like real people. The book had photographs of the victims, the author, their friends, and family, and the crime scene photos (nothing graphic) after each chapter the way a true crime non-fiction would. I sometimes forget this was blurring the line between fiction and reality because it felt so vivid and lifelike. 
 
🗺️ Ambiance: Edgewood felt real (okay, it is, but you know what I mean) and some of the places you could look up on Google Earth if you want to enhance the immersiveness. But it isn’t necessary to do that to get a sense of the atmosphere and layout of different places. It also didn’t have info-dumping of street names or routes etc.  
 
🔥 Fuel: The mystery of the serial killer’s identity is the driving force and their ability to get away with the crimes made it especially unnerving. It felt like a true crime investigative podcast with extra filler (kind of like CBC or Wondery style) where we get to know the host and their opinions along the way. There is lots of guessing and second-guessing throughout about who (or what) is committing these crimes and I wanted to re-read it when I found out at the end. 
 
🎬 Scenes: The pacing starts off slow, primarily focused on the author’s childhood and hometown dynamics. The slow burn was okay for me since it laid the groundwork for the story and characters. When we aren’t getting facts or memoir bits, we get background on the victims and where they were prior to going missing. The storytelling captured the essence of the 1980s without being heavy-handed. The later parts of the book avoided common crime fiction tropes and had a grounded and realistic view of investigative work. 
 
🤓 Random Thoughts: If you don’t mind slow burn character studies alongside a serial killer crime fiction mystery, I think this will be enjoyable. The character study is not of the victims or the serial killer though, and sometimes I felt like I was losing interest a little bit in the day-to-day life of the author or his journalist friend when I was desperate to know more about the evidence or what is going on with the case. But ultimately the blend of personal narrative and mystery was creative and captivating. I hope more authors will play with metafiction this way.   
 
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Content Heads-Up: Serial murder. Gender-based violence (against teen girls). Body decomposition. Medical (cancer; recall, quick mention). Death of a parent. Death of a child. Grief.
Rep: Cis-gender. Heterosexual. White American experience and characters. Black American characters. Ecuadorian ancestry.
 
👀 Format: Everand Digital and Audio
The audio was so annoying to pair with text because there are chapter breaks that are titled, then within each chapter there is a sub chapter 1, 2, 3 etc. The audio chapter numbers don't match the text chapter numbers. 
 
“Reviews are my musings 💖 powered by puppy snuggles 🐶 refined by my AI bookworm bestie ✨”
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jjreads331's review against another edition

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

3.0

The metafiction of this story is great, and it is what kept me going. The author clearly read into the genre and managed to create a story that confused at least half of my book group as to whether this was a real memoir or fiction. The issues that I had are with the pacing. There isn't really any denouement and I think the book needed that. One thing I really did love was the loving depictions of Maryland. I wanted to immediately go back to visit. Oh, one last nit:
the pictures included were hilarious and an excellent addition, but like HELL are those girls with their perfect 2020s middle part hair from the 80s. insert *sure jan* meme here.
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