Reviews tagging 'Panic attacks/disorders'

Girls of Storm and Shadow by Natasha Ngan

9 reviews

denee16's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

This book and the series so far has been incredibly hard to read. Not because it is bad, quite the opposite actually. This book has made me feel seen in my own journey of healing and dealing with trama. It shows the ugly truth of every topic it covers, but does so with such authenticity it can make it hard to breath. I am enraptured by this book and Natasha's writing. Her imagery is incredible and descriptive and her story is profound.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Blood, Child abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Sexual content, Emotional abuse, Kidnapping, Murder, Toxic relationship, Classism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, War, Hate crime, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

Moderate: Alcohol, Kidnapping, Fire/Fire injury, Homophobia, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, and Mental illness

dokushoka's review

adventurous dark reflective tense slow-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? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Classism, War, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Grief, Murder, Outing, and Violence

Minor: Confinement, Gaslighting, Panic attacks/disorders, Alcoholism, Sexual violence, Alcohol, Homophobia, and Lesbophobia

fablesbookstuff's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense 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: Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual violence, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Self harm, Toxic relationship, and Alcohol

foreverinastory's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional slow-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

3.0

Something about this story just has me at meh. I think I need to take a break from marathoning audios. I definitely feel tired. I will reread this book at some point because it's definitely good, right now I am not in the mood for it and it reflects in the 3 stars. I wanted to enjoy this more than book one, but it's about the same for me.

Rep: Asian coded cast, sapphic female MC with PTSD, lesbian coded female love interest with PTSD, lesbian coded female side character, side MLM couple.

CWs: Death, violence, blood, self harm, sexual assault, sexual violence, grief, war, gore, alcohol consumption, alcoholism, panic attacks, mental illness (PTSD), rape, suicide, murder, body horror, slavery, injury/injury detail, addiction. Moderate: Child abuse, child death, genocide, physical abuse, racism, consensual sexual content, suicidal thoughts, toxic relationship, vomit, trafficking, kidnapping, fire/fire injury, adult/minor relationship, misogyny, gaslighting. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Death, Violence, Blood, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Grief, War, Gore, Alcohol, Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, Rape, Suicide, Murder, Body horror, Slavery, Injury/Injury detail, and Addiction

Moderate: Vomit, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Child abuse, Child death, Genocide, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Fire/Fire injury, Adult/minor relationship, Misogyny, and Gaslighting

prettynerdy3's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, War, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, and Vomit

rosies_book_shelf's review

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Blood, Death, and Murder

autistic_dragon's review

dark fast-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

CONTENT WARNING: Extreme violence, rape and subsequent trauma, sexual slavery, self-harm, suicide, alcoholism

This is one of my most grudging five-star reviews ever.

“Why,” you may ask, “…is that? You shouldn’t feel guilted into giving a book more stars than you think it deserves.”

Well, the thing is, the childish—not as in petulant, but rather the optimistic and idealistic—part of me wants the last third of this book to be very different from what it is, but the mature person I am now cannot help but marvel at the ways Ngan tugs at the reader’s heartstrings, and how the numerous twists and turns into moral ambiguity weave so deftly together.Looking back at my 

November 2018 review of the first book in the series, I was being overly simplistic as to the future course of the series. While the series remains interesting East Asian-inspired high fantasy with enough anthropomorphic animals to mistake this for a piece of furry fandom fiction, and also even more same-sex romances than the first book, to the point that I’m pretty sure there’s more same-sex sexual tension than opposite-sex, this is very much also a war story. Not one of epic pitched battles for control of the kingdom, but rather the dark political underbelly of war that embodies the (in)famous Carl von Clausewitz quote, “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” In this way it is reminiscent of the final* installment of The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay, and judging from my skimming of the other reviews, the general consensus as to that book may apply to you as well. This book contains multiple reader gut-punches of increasing intensity, and I was not kidding around when I included violence in the content warning up there. This book is so violent it’s a miracle the publishers were able to market it as YA.

This book takes Book 1’s already dark premise and makes it even darker, and in such an artful way that I can’t help admiring the grim tableau that Natasha Ngan has made for us. Therefore, five stars.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Suicide, Gore, Violence, Trafficking, Toxic relationship, Slavery, Sexual violence, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Self harm, Panic attacks/disorders, Grief, Child abuse, and Alcoholism

julesadventurezone's review

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Panic attacks/disorders, and Violence

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Grief, and Self harm

Minor: Alcoholism, Sexual content, Sexism, and Slavery

bibookworm's review

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

5/5 stars! This book was an emotional journey. I loved the book just as much as the first book in the series, Girls of Paper and Fire. This book did not disappoint and I loved learning more about the world of this story as well as the characters. I adored learning more about Wren and her backstory as we knew very little about her in book 1. I loved seeing Lei develop as a warrior and love her fierceness. The new characters introduced in this story are great and I loved seeing Lei make more friends. However, I wish we had more insight about what the other Paper girls are going through besides the few chapters we got about them. This story was just as addicting and hard to put down as book 1. The cliffhanger at the end killed me and I would like to be put into a cryo sleep coma until book three.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders and Sexual assault

Minor: Alcoholism