Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim

4 reviews

skbat's review

challenging emotional mysterious 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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Death of parent, and Ableism

Moderate: Car accident, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Cancer

Minor: Suicide, War, Confinement, Bullying, Racism, Blood, Cursing, Forced institutionalization, Rape, and Police brutality

_david_'s review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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

4.0

The book starts of with a cliché (a witness that cannot speak), but do not worry and stick with it, it's handled very well. I really appreciated the author's sensitive and thoughful portrayal of nonspeaking characters. It's clear that she researched and spoke to people who are nonspeaking themselves about it. This care is also evident in the author's notes and acknowledgments.

The main character shows some bad behavious: making quick assumptions, speaking around a nonspeaking character instead of to them, and just acting as a general teenager. However, the future main character, whose POV we're following, calls her past self out on it and voices her shame. In general I feel like Mia would've made more sense as a teenager than someone in college/uni.

The author's background in philosophy shines through, especially in the exploration of happiness. It's clearly written by someone with an academic background.

The ending left a positive lasting impression. I'm sure I will think back on it often during the rest of my life.

The reason that I'm giving the book 4 stars instead of 5 is because the writer POV often annoyed me with her perspective. I specifically refer to all the moments which said something along the lines of "but with the information I know now, why [odd thing] happened made sense" without any further explanation. It happened too much and sometimes for relatively minor occurrences. It disrupted the flow of the story and was hard to take serious after a while. A small point that I disliked but not enough to affect the score, that only Mia, Adam (the dad) and Eugene were well rounded characters. Hannah (the mother) and especially John were quite flat eventhough they were very important to the story.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Racism, Violence, War, Death, Police brutality, Ableism, Bullying, Rape, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Grief, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Pandemic/Epidemic, Abandonment, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Murder, Pandemic/Epidemic, Car accident, Xenophobia, Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, Terminal illness, Chronic illness, Colonisation, and Mental illness

Minor: Dementia, Classism, Toxic relationship, and Cancer

lilawsahar's review

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

God I learned so much from this book. I am destroyed that Eugene lived for 14 years without being able to communicate because he doesn’t have fine motor skills and his disability enables him to speak. How did he wake up each day knowing that he was going to be treated like an idiot and he had to continue on? The realization that people live like this in real life is gut wrenching. And how I contributed to this idea. Not treating people with disabilities as equals. Makes me sick. Everyone needs to read this book. It blew me away with that insight alone. 

I am also utterly sick that we will never know what happened to their dad. Did Eugene kill him? We will never know especially since she put the wrong passcode in the cell phone. I wouldn’t have done that. They don’t know who Eugene is because he wasn’t able to communicate with them. But Eugene knows them. That’s gut wrenching to me. What happened to him??

Tbh I think the happiness quotient part was unneeded in the story. That’s just my take.

He just wanted his daughter to have a good life. But the story isn’t able her. It’s able Eugene and him.

Also ACAB. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Death of parent, Pandemic/Epidemic, Death, Bullying, Confinement, and Police brutality

Minor: Sexism, Rape, and Racism

annoyedhumanoid's review against another edition

mysterious reflective slow-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? Yes

4.0

i loved the narration. i understand why it isn't for everyone, but my brain works in the same way so i felt at home. i also appreciated how this book advocated much more strongly for the humanity of its characters with disabilities than Miracle Creek (Angie Kim's debut novel) did. and that it took place during covid times. my main issues were that, compared to Miracle Creek, the plot:

1. wasn't as gripping. it started to drag three-fourths of the way through, and i got fed up with all the cheap foreshadowing of the form "looking back, i wish [x] hadn't happened".
2. didn't feel as expertly-crafted. though i recognize that's kind of the point—
   not all mysteries, especially missing person cases, have neat solutions; that's life
   —it was still somewhat disappointing. i'm trying to
   learn the lesson Mia did and
   accept an open ending—
   i choose to believe that her and John's mind-meld recreating the accident was a display of fraternal jeong, just the tiniest bit of magical realism.

nonetheless, this has cemented Angie Kim as an author on my radar, and i'm looking forward to her next book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Ableism, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Cancer, Violence, Infidelity, Police brutality, Sexism, Suicide, Bullying, Blood, Hate crime, Murder, Cursing, Terminal illness, and Xenophobia

Minor: Sexual violence, Confinement, Alcohol, Sexual assault, Rape, Car accident, Deportation, and Gun violence