Reviews with content warning for Racism - Sisters of the Lost Nation

A very slow read. The messaging was incredibly important as many don't know the sexual violence and general violence against indigenous women, but the book itself didn't hold my attention like I wished it would.

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zombiezami's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.5

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minimicropup's review

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dark emotional informative mysterious reflective 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? No

4.5

The Energy: Sympathetic, compassionate, questioning

The Scene: 🇺🇸 A (fictional) Takoda Reservation in Louisiana, USA

The POV: We dive into the life of a high school senior and housekeeper at the new casino resort whose world starts unraveling over 36 intense days.

🎬 Tale-Telling: Third-person observational style where we are closely following our MC, Anna. I liked the writing style and how it had me feeling connected without intruding on the story to explain everything. We’re shown Indigenous experiences and stories in a way that felt relatable and authentic.

👥 Characters: Not a character driven story, but it has intricate family and sibling dynamics so if you don’t care about the characters or aren’t curious about their futures, it could be a lackluster read. I liked how we saw the little ways decisions snowball out of hand. And how Anna sometimes puts herself in danger but it makes sense as we get to know her, and she's consistent and does get scared sometimes.

🤓 Reader Role: Invited guest. I felt like I was walking around with Anna, sitting at their dining room table or hanging on the couch, trying to figure out the mystery and navigate the scenes.

🗺️ Ambiance: Unsettling, ominous, heavy, even depressing. The family home, the hotel casino, and even the school all felt so real and the interactions and character behaviours, even for peripheral, captured all the little looks and changes in body language.

🔥 Fuel: Who can Anna trust? Who is friend and who is foe? What happened to her sister and who may be involved? What is all the sketchy stuff going on at the hotel suites? At its heart, the story is more of a mystery about the disappearances of young girls wrapped in contemporary fiction about life on the Reservation and the effects of the casino and resort on the community.

🚙 Journey: Steady pace with conclusive endings and character development. I sometimes felt lost, but that was largely me losing track of what happened between non-linear chapters.

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🐕 Howls: The non-linear timeline where the 36 days are presented out of order had me keeping a mental log of events to remember if something happened before or after an incident or reveal. Have a physical book to flip through meant it was minor, but often pulled me out of the story.

🐩 Tail Wags: The atmospheric tension, balancing the mundane with a sense of foreboding, intertwining Indigenous lore and symbolism seamlessly without info-dumping.

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Mood Reading Match-Up:

Contemporary fiction about family struggles, sibling secrets, and growing up too fast
Hints of Indigenous folklore and creature feature spirits
Heavy and symbolic horrors about being ‘different’, Indigenous histories and experiences
Reflective, exploratory themes about connection, belonging, fitting in, growing up, growing apart, being different, storytelling, preservation of the past, grief, loss, corruption, and vulnerability

Content Heads-Up: Missing persons. Physical and domestic abuse (boss to employee, spouses against each other). Bullying (rejection, ostracizing, teasing; on page). Racism (insinuated, brief; on-page). Sexual assault (forced, grooming, trafficking; descriptive, recall). Animal death (wildlife, roadkill, shooting rodents). Self-harm (momentary, brief). Alcohol and cannabis use.

Rep: Indigenous American characters and cultural experiences. Two-Spirit and cisgender. Heterosexual.

👀 Format: Hardcover

“Reviews are my musings 💖 powered by puppy snuggles 🐶 refined by my AI bookworm bestie ✨”

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haley_mil_reads's review

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adventurous challenging dark informative mysterious sad tense fast-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? No

5.0

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katharina90's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

This novel highlights the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2-spirits as well as other issues faced by Native communities and as such I think it's an important contribution to the genre.

Sadly I just couldn't get into the story. It had so much potential but the plot and characters were underdeveloped and the many time jumps in the beginning made it hard to follow. I also listened on audio and didn't like the narration.

Rather than setting this story in his own tribe and culture, the author chose to create a fictional tribe and incorporated stories from various other nations. I have mixed feelings about this. But at least there's an author's note at the end where the origins of certain elements are credited.

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pathologicalreader's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-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

4.5

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imstephtacular's review

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.0

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