Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - Young Mungo

Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

brattyreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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bookdragon137's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

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

4.0

I skimmed this one besties. Will have to go back and read it properly sometime, but I was very much not in the mood for how sad it was.

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commiebeatle's review

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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milou125's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-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

3.75

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mickstrauther's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.0

This was one of those books that i liked much more at the end. This gets a 4 because of how much emotion I felt at the end—surprised, sad and angry yet hopeful for Mungo, and anticipatory with every page turn. Definitely a dark and sad book at times, dense with violence, but that’s also where Douglas Stuart’s writing packs the most punch. Pun partially intended.

In fact, i didn’t feel as though I strongly enjoyed this book until the ending fourth-ish, when the plot line gains momentum and tension. Most of the book is good, but doesn’t always have a clear course or direction of tension and action. Not that that’s always a bad thing, but have patience. The romance, for example, is slow to come on and honestly not the bulk of the book, like I thought it would be. This isn’t really about the love between Mungo and James. Most of this story foregrounds Mungo’s fucked up family and his relationship with each person in it. The other half of this story is his odd excursion with two gross men, which is also interesting but takes a while to really pull you through.

That’s not to say it isn’t a well done novel, or that it was boring, but I did find the prose a bit lacking in pull for me. Even if the idea of the story was steady and interesting, something about the pace or the words didn’t always do it justice. For a while, i was just ready to be done with it so that I could hit the climax. Again, the story was still interesting, but I can see someone giving up too soon if they aren’t willing to him just trust that the story will pick up tension and interest. Just bask in the words and nice sentences and trust the process lol.

One last thing—I think Douglas Stuart did a great job capturing character complexity. The people here exist in a gray area, where we even get uncomfortably close to the bad ones. I especially found mungo’s brother Hamish interesting—violent and scary, but with brief flashes of something almost kind(?)

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noahfence2007's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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owcase's review against another edition

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emotional fast-paced

5.0

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kayarosee's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad 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

4.0

This was a hard and heartbreaking book to read. I resonated a lot with the character of Jodie as an older sister myself and saw my younger brother in the main character Mungo. It took me a lot longer to read than many other books this year. But a heart-wrenching novel. I would call this the more depressing, more poverty-stricken “Call Me by Your Name”.

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