Reviews tagging 'Suicide attempt'

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

4 reviews

discarded_dust_jacket's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

2.0

My rating of this book is based entirely on personal preference and not necessarily a reflection on how good or bad it is. I could see someone with different tastes than me absolutely loving this, and that’s totally cool.

This is one of those books that is purposefully unclear for the first, like, 75%, until you’re granted some grand revelation that’s supposed to make it all make sense. Except I still had more questions than answers at the end of this story, and feeling lost the entire time didn’t make for a very enjoyable reading experience for me.

The writing was beautiful and descriptive yet very cryptic in nature, which made it hard to connect with the protagonist and the story. I think I’d need to re-read this two or three times before having a clearer understanding of what’s going on. There’s definitely some allegorical meaning at play here, and if I had to guess, something to do with generational trauma.

Huge trigger warning for pregnancy and childbirth which is depicted in probably the gnarliest way I’ve ever encountered.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, Body horror, Grief, Pregnancy, Blood, Death, Gore, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Confinement and Infertility

Minor: Excrement

_fallinglight_'s review against another edition

challenging mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

2.25

Unremarkable save for the ending and a few other bits throughout that were intriguing. Maybe this story would've benefitted from being a 350 page novel bc it would've answered some questions and made you (or ok, me) care more about Iraxi or the other characters or the story itself that worse than not caring about, I found super silly at points. Though the point was to be lyrical and mysterious and blah blah and it didn't work for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Pregnancy, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Body horror, Death, and Gore

Moderate: Death of parent

Minor: Suicide attempt

shannananahey's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious medium-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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Vomit, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Suicide attempt, Miscarriage, Suicide, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Infertility

sarah984's review

dark slow-paced

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

3.0

This was another strange one to me. A cosmic horror novella about a pregnant woman on an ark at sea giving birth to a creature. I don't really know why this didn't work for me but there was so much weird relationship drama and the main character’s decisions just seem to come out of nowhere. The writing is good and I think I understand the intention of the story but it just wasn't for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Pregnancy, and Sexual content

Moderate: Child death, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Vomit

Minor: Infidelity