Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

308 reviews

amymarchlawrence's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Cursing, Physical abuse, Emotional abuse, Torture, Gaslighting, Misogyny, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Suicide, Chronic illness, Racism, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and Toxic relationship

ammah's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• 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: Suicide, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Death of parent, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, and Sexual violence

Minor: Mental illness

c_peach's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.5

This book… it’s been on my TBR for a long while. I am far from a video gamer, so I was hesitant to pick up this book. The character development was real and genuine. There was disability and racial diversity, with focus on multi-racial youth and the impact of this. The authors ability to evoke emotion from the reader (at least me) at certain points was also impressive. 

The middle was slow for me, as well as most parts when they were discussing making video games (their lives work and passion). I am often drawn to character driven books, but for some reason that was not enough to make this a 5 ⭐️ with this book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Mass/school shootings, Mental illness, and Racism

Moderate: Homophobia, Car accident, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Toxic friendship, Medical trauma, and Death of parent

jogg1's review against another edition

emotional medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Death of parent, Death, and Gun violence

Moderate: Car accident and Domestic abuse

Minor: Abortion

_meganrose's review against another edition

adventurous emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

This was so beautifully written. Video games to Sam are books to me. Loved this. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death of parent, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, Suicide attempt, Abortion, Suicide, Death, Cancer, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, and Mass/school shootings

jillaay_h's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• 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: Abortion, Medical trauma, Adult/minor relationship, Car accident, Racism, Blood, Death, Drug use, Gun violence, Homophobia, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Sexual harassment, and Toxic relationship

cynthianohemi's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence and Grief

Moderate: Homophobia, Sexual assault, Suicide, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Abortion, Alcohol, Racial slurs, Pregnancy, and Drug use

The grief written into the book has been done so incredibly well. The amount of times I cried and at one point had to put the book down to sob for several minutes - it's beautiful. As someone who's maternal grandparents practically raised her, Sam's final talk with his grandfather reminded me of the final talks with my grandparents- the last 'I love yous' are the easiest and hardest to utter. Sam and Sadie's friendship is like most friendships between two people who have traumas in their lives - it's difficult and complicated but theee is so much love there between them. I stand by the decision to not have them end up together romantically! Sometimes staying friends with someone trumps being intimately together. Overall, I get the hype of this book. It's a hauntingly beautiful story about love, loss, trauma but friendships. l love it

wooblatoober's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

i really enjoyed zevin’s ability to portray characters with generosity & portray ever-changing relationships, even with rifts, and just overall make everything feel real.

i’m obsessed with marx’s fruit tree motif. he’s ever-giving, and he’s beautiful, and he’s soft. the love he gives freely is so beautiful and bountiful and juicy and sweet, but not too much so, like a fuyu persimmon. for now, maybe because of my own experiences, i’m more hung up on marx’s death than sam & sadie’s stories and relationship.

zevin does an AMAZING job of showing how people and their relationships change over time. it’s crazy how much my opinions on the characters changed over time, waxing and waning and flipping between them.

specifically, i loved sadie at the beginning and felt sorry for how she was being manipulated, then disliked her toward the end, which isn’t even how every reader might feel about her, since she seems like such a real person, and real people have some people that like them and some people that don’t. conversely, i was a bit annoyed by sam for the beginning, thinking he seemed like any other toxic smart guy who thinks he’s smarter than everybody else, until i started LOVING him toward the middle, then i was a bit annoyed by him again by the end for his lack of communication, though i was proud of his growth and baby steps in communication.

this book reads like creative nonfiction. it’s remarkable. my only small complaint is a major spoiler (everything i’ve marked “spoiler” is a major spoiler though), and that’s basically the end of the book. tl;dr for the spoiler, i felt like the ending was just over the line of a little bit too late in the back-and-forth of the story to feel satisfied by it. i felt empty at the end like i do out of all the best books, but that emptiness came from events that happened before the ending of the book, and the ending was overshadowed by that and felt too little too late.

by sadie and sam’s happy ending, which implies that they’ll fight again in the future but will work to be better to themselves and each other, i was kinda over it. overshadowed by marx’s death, i had become done with sadie’s paralysis and easy-to-anger attitude as well as her ability to hold a grudge that outshines teen sam’s, and done with sam’s refusal to communicate, even if they had experiences or mental illnesses that facilitated those actions (or lack thereof).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism, Racism, Gore, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Gun violence, Mental illness, Pregnancy, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Murder, Violence, Cursing, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Blood, Body horror, Car accident, Death, and Emotional abuse

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Cancer, Toxic relationship, Sexual content, Drug use, Hate crime, Sexual assault, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Ableism, Cultural appropriation, Antisemitism, and Body shaming

ckiyoko's review against another edition

fast-paced

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

2.5

This is a really well-crafted book, works with form and POV in really interesting ways, and felt like a very propulsive read. For all that though, I could not decide when I was reading it if I was enjoying it. I cared enough to continue reading, but I got to the end and still was uncertain if I enjoyed the experience of reading it, or would recommend it to someone else. I will say, the NPC chapter is beautiful and the callbacks in it feel earned.

I'm also deeply Not Thrilled with "Solution" being a blatant ripoff of Brenda Romero's "Train" that goes uncredited, especially given this book deals so heavily with the power dynamics in video game design and how often women are overlooked/uncredited. 

For me, I also struggled with some of the moments of the book that felt like they handwaved the concept of cultural appropriation, and later the soapbox moments about how sensitive the newer generation is. They felt a bit out of place, and more like the bubbling up of some deeper seated anxiety from the author than something coming from the characters' reactions to their place and situations. 

I felt this similarly in the explorations of Sam's experience as being mixed EAsian and white, which felt like they tread the same ground that's been tread before/existed more as a justification for the existence of mixed white and Asian people. I don't know exactly how to phrase it. It was just something that was off-putting to me as someone who is in that category because it feels like it's re-litigating the same conversation we've been having for years and played to the same tropes and lines, which felt...recursive? Like it flattened a complex and nuance experience to a monolith? I'm not sure, but at the very least, I found it exhausting to hear the same talking points I heard in middle and high school here. There was an element of self-consciousness to the explorations of this that felt, again, like someone else's insecurities about their identity bubbling up here rather than the character.

But yeah, pretty wild book. Well written, but felt kind of like a liminal space turned into a novel.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mass/school shootings, Ableism, Sexual assault, Gun violence, Sexual violence, Death, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Emotional abuse, and Toxic friendship

emmalynnn's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Abortion, Gun violence, Sexual assault, Domestic abuse, and Sexual violence