Reviews tagging 'Child death'

Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn

4 reviews

k_shimer's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Pregnancy, Classism, Confinement, Gaslighting, Medical content, Mental illness, Sexism, and Sexual content

Moderate: Dysphoria, Emotional abuse, Death, and Death of parent

Minor: Addiction, Infertility, Lesbophobia, Pandemic/Epidemic, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Sexual assault, Slavery, Alcohol, Blood, Cancer, Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Biphobia, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Racism, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, and War

jacquatch's review

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Classism, Sexism, Child death, Confinement, Toxic relationship, Bullying, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Drug abuse and Death of parent

lexyan's review

emotional reflective 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? No

4.0

I was skeptical early on reading this, but I ended up really liking it. It's a good takedown of gender essentialism set on the backdrop of early apocalypse-level climate change. There's heavy use of dramatic irony that works really well to keep you invested in reading it. All of the POV characters are well-written, including the perfectly hateable villain. The ending is hopeful but a little unsatisfying, which sort of feels perfect for the story.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Gaslighting, Pregnancy, Confinement, Drug abuse, and Misogyny

Moderate: Sexual violence, Transphobia, Grief, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Rape

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Alcohol, Classism, Vomit, Child death, Pandemic/Epidemic, and War

daisha101's review

dark hopeful mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

Yours for the Taking is set in the future and spans the years 2050-2078. Climate change has devastated the planet which sparks the need for new ideas to save humanity. The “Inside” project is supposed to do just that, but there’s more to it than the public knows. This climate change based story is a good read for dystopian fans and those looking to read stories with a strong cast of women characters.

I had high hopes for this book, but it didn’t quite reach them. The premise of this book is interesting and I did enjoy the story for the most part, but there were several moments that would have more powerful if they were left for the reader to reflect on and not immediately explained away. This tendency for over-explaining made me question who was the intended audience of the book and took me out of the story. There were a few specific parts in the story that also irked me including a line about having children to fill a void and a character bed-sharing with an infant.

This story spans two decades so there’s a fair amount of time that’s quickly described in a couple paragraphs and not detailed which makes sense, but I do wish there were more scenes in the book in place of some of these descriptions so that I could get more engaged in the characters and their interactions. The ending also felt anticlimactic and I wish there was more there. Overall though, this was a book I did mostly enjoy reading and would recommend to others as I can see this being something that some people really love even though it wasn’t that for me.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Child death, and Drug abuse