Reviews tagging 'Excrement'

Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris

3 reviews

lacey_wi's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad tense fast-paced

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

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy, Medical content, Murder, War, Violence, Sexual harassment, Excrement, Antisemitism, Suicide attempt, Sexual assault, Rape, Death of parent, Death, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Genocide, and Adult/minor relationship

Minor: Drug use, Child death, and Fire/Fire injury

bexh's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-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? It's complicated

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Excrement, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Hate crime, Medical content, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, and Vomit

ravensandlace's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Find this review and others like it at https://aravenclawlibraryx.wordpress.com

Anytime I read a book relating to the Holocaust or the Soivet Gulags, I feel a myraid of emotions. Oftentimes, I can only read books about these topics once every couple of months because they are rough to read. There is a lot of violence in these books and sometimes I can’t stomach that there are some truly cruel and evil people in this world. But I think reading these kinds of books are important.

Onto the actual review. This book was absolutely amazing and I quickly devoured it. Cilka was so amazing and I had nothing but the utmost respect for her. To survive in a concentration camp and then be sent to a gulag where her suffering didn’t end there, I don't know how she didn’t just give up. She had so much strength in her. I was blown away by her willingness and drive to survive.  

This book was incredibly heartbreaking and there are a lot of graphic scenes of a variety of different things. There is one scene in particular involving rape that happens in the first 100 pages or so. It’s not super graphic but it happens quite a bit. The first time I read, I was shocked and it took quite a bit out of me, if I’m being honest. I had to go pet Shelby (my dog) so I could be in a better headspace for the rest of the book. It’s not an easy book to read but it’s worth it. Exercise self care while reading this book. 

Overall, I could go on and on about this book but it’s best to be experienced yourself. Note that while this is a companion book to the first book, I recommend reading the first book as events are mentioned in this book that happened in the first. You won’t be super confused if you end up reading this book first, but some context might be lost.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Blood, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Excrement, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Grief, Medical trauma, Medical content, Physical abuse, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Torture, Toxic relationship, and Violence

This is about a young woman's journey, trying to live through the Soviet Gulags. These were horrible places to live in and often times, death happened.