Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones

2 reviews

readthesparrow's review

dark mysterious fast-paced

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

2.75

Style is interesting, and on a technical prose level is is excellent. However, the heavy references can make it difficult to follow at times, even for a horror/slasher lover. Style, despite being interesting and being thematically appropriate, was also difficult to follow at times and often exhausting, even for a 200 page novel. Normally I would blaze through a 200 page novel, but this took me five days to read because I could only get through around 20-40 pages at a time before having to take a break.

Liked the story and the characters, but it was just. Too much at times. 

Also,

the final college epilogue was really goofy. Did I like it? Eh. Sure. It's camp.

I think I was mostly just glad it was over.

Interesting to see the bones it shares with MHIACS.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Animal cruelty, Blood, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, and Murder

Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal death, Sexual content, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Adult/minor relationship, and Animal cruelty

dragonbloom's review

dark mysterious 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

3.25

Hated the writing style, but found the ending more satisfactory than I was expecting. Enjoyed Izzy’s character development.

The reveal that Izzy is a virgin and Lindsay isn’t was awful, though.

 

The deaths were a little contrived, and the lack of environmental description left me confused during action scenes, but I usually got there in the end. The characters felt 3D. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Child abuse, Alcoholism, Bullying, Gore, Grief, and Sexual content

Minor: Mass/school shootings, Suicide attempt, and Self harm

Murder, violence, injury, gore: The book is quite violent, as it mimics slasher movies. Fire:

A character burns to death. Their wounds are described rather graphically.

A fire breaks out in the climax. Animal death:

A horse is killed in the climax.

Adult/minor relationship: A teenage girl and an adult man flirt. They later go home together. Whilst I do not believe he made sexual advances beyond the flirting seen onscreen, this could still be upsetting. At the beginning of the book, a character implies she slept with a teacher.

This character later turns out to be 19, almost 20, though it is still inappropriate for the teacher to do this.

Child abuse:

A character’s father appears to be verbally abusive.

Alcoholism: A character spends a lot of time drinking. Her father is certainly an alcoholic. Bullying: There is a scene in which a character steals another’s backpack to upset him. Grief: The deaths in this book are not much mourned, due to the fast pace. However, there is discussion of memorials and

one death appears to hit a character quite hard.

Sexual content: A few sex scenes, as well as sexualised nudity. School shootings:

A character has brought a gun to school. He is stopped before he can shoot anyone.

Suicide, self harm: A character is mentioned to have “suicide scars”