Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox

15 reviews

daralexandria's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Gun violence, Blood, and Fire/Fire injury

the_crooked_neighbor's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious 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? No

1.5

This book stressed me out. I wish the description more accurately portrayed what the book would be about and I wish it had trigger warnings. I take part of the blame for not checking more thoroughly beforehand. If you like mysteries with psych horror elements you might like this. If you saw this and thought, "I love books about books," take a strong pass.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Dementia, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Body horror, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Violence, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Drug use, Gun violence, Sexual content, Torture, Medical content, and Medical trauma

A heavy focus of this book is

memory loss. As we see the story through the eyes of the person with memory loss, it builds a tense sense of anxiety as we see her struggling to confront the fact that she is slowly losing her mind. Proceed with caution if loss of autonomy and sense of self will trigger you.

displacedcactus's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

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

This book had all of the basic components for a Gothic: 

• Orphaned young woman of meager financial means.  
• Crumbling manor on the moors.  
• Servants who know more than they're letting on.  
• A handsome, charming, wealthy suitor who is definitely up to no good but the heroine doesn't notice.  
• A rough, gruff man of meager financial means who is clearly soft on the heroine but she doesn't notice.  
• Spooky shenanigans.

You might think that surely, the author would do some interesting things with these tropes and archetypes, this being 2023 and the Gothic being a well-worn genre. But no. Everything basically turns out how you would probably expect it to if you have ever read a Gothic or watched a Gothic movie.

I was cruising right along with this book, not really loving it but not disliking it enough to DNF, and hoping it would maybe surprise me in the end, but then at around 80% in it just got so over-the-top, the writing seemed to decrease in quality, and I just got completely annoyed.

If you have never read a Gothic before, OR you enjoy the genre and specifically want a predictable version of it, you'll probably enjoy this. But if you're looking for someone to innovate or turn tropes on their head, don't bother picking this up. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood

Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Violence, and Death of parent

Minor: Sexism and Classism

tamara_joy's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Every trope you could wish for in a good gothic thriller is there. It has it's own engrossing premise, a fun read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood and Gaslighting

Moderate: Confinement, Death, and Classism

Minor: Gun violence, Mental illness, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and War

latelygrace's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

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

2.0

I don’t know how I keep ending up with the weirdest books, but here we are again. What a whirlwind, and not in a good way. It has a promising concept, and took me by surprise by taking a swift left turn into an attempt at a modern gothic narrative. Then it became increasingly clear that it was written by an American who knows just enough about English aristocracy to totally misuse it and in her rush to include so many different elements and plot devices the author felt like she was alternately lost in her own story and then rushing ahead of herself. The “magic” builds up for 3/4 of the book, only to be resolved unsatisfactorily in the course of a few pages. The literary trend of dual storylines spanning history was clumsy and not fully developed. The characters of the past more literary device than developed characters though the reader is clearly supposed to feel some connection toward them. Not to mentioned the rushed romance squeezed into the last chapters. Threads that were tied off were done so too quickly and haphazardly and several others were left to dangle as the author completely shifted focus in the end. Anyway, not at all what I expected and tbh I don’t really know what to rate it so I’m going to go middle of the road again with 2.5  ⭐️ or maybe a straight 2 for  making me read the last few chapters of “romantic” nonsense. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Dementia, Grief, Religious bigotry, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, War, and Classism