Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

A Neon Darkness by Lauren Shippen

11 reviews

bumblemee's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

A Neon Darkness was a must-read for me because Damien was a character I could not make up my mind about while listening to The Bright Sessions. ... To be honest, I don't think the book helped that much on that front, but it was great. 
I got through this book SO quickly; while being rather slow, it was still a pageturner (to me). It does an amazing job of making you feel more conflicted about Damien than you ever did before. I was stuck between feeling for him and wanting to yell at him constantly. He is one of those characters where you understand where he is coming from while knowing that it doesn't excuse his current actions and you get more and more frustrated watching him fuck up constantly. 
I don't know if I reccomend reading this if you don't like him at all in The Bright Sessions. It may give you perspective, it may make you hate him more. I was not surprised by anything that happened in this book, but I still (clearly) enjoyed reading it a lot. I was emotionally invested af, maybe because this book confronted me with tiny dark fractions of myself that I don't like that much. Reading this made me think a lot. 

Since I'm writing this review more that a year after finishing the book I am not able to provide in detail content warnings, but as always a lot of others did that well.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse

pyromastyx's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse

Moderate: Abandonment

saukittome's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Death, and Murder

Minor: Fire/Fire injury, Addiction, Alcoholism, Alcohol, and Gaslighting

candycain's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense 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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Kidnapping, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Stalking

Moderate: Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Confinement, Medical content, and Sexual assault

Minor: Blood, Torture, and Medical trauma

stardustandrockets's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious 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? Yes

5.0

The Bright Sessions has been one of my favorite podcasts for years. When these companion novels were announced I was beyond excited—especially A Neon Darkness because it's the origin story of my favorite character, Damien.

This book was everything I wanted. Insight into why Damien is the way he is, how he got the name Damien, and just how broken of a human he is. Struggling to control his power of persuasion, he doesn’t always know what’s real when it comes to other people. Do they genuinely like him or do they only like him because he wants them to like him? This book focuses on the present while giving little glimpses of the past and what led Robert (Damien) to LA in the first place, the loss of Them. There are also little snippets from the perspective of the other characters prevalent to the story that help push the story along. I don’t always like little interjections like that, but I think the author used them sparingly and in a way that helped the overall story instead of taking away. Because of what Damien can do and what was going on it was nice to have a little peek into the other character’s minds at times. This was especially true knowing that the book doesn’t start out from Damien’s POV (which was a little confusing at first, but was soon cleared up as to why this was the case).

While the whole story isn’t happy (much of what we know about Damien from the podcast isn’t happy, so I don’t know why I expected this story to be happy), it definitely explains a lot about everyone’s favorite (or not so favorite) villain from The Bright Sessions. It breaks my heart knowing what he's gone through and how he can't really trust anyone or himself because of what he can do. Overall I am extremely happy knowing more about Damien and what led him to the events of the podcast. It’s an origin story more than anything and I hope you’ll pick it up. You don’t have to know anything about the podcast to enjoy it, but you’ll definitely get a lot more out of the story if you do. This is another excellent book by Lauren Shippen.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Abandonment, Alcohol, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Kidnapping, Murder, Toxic friendship, Violence, and Torture

Moderate: Addiction, Drug use, and Self harm

beccaand's review

dark tense medium-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

4.25

Such a fascinating look into Damien's backstory. Villain origin story? You love to see it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Death, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Murder

Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, Addiction, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt

lumberelk's review

dark 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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Suicide attempt, Death, Violence, Toxic relationship, Murder, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, Kidnapping, and Addiction

Minor: Vomit, Islamophobia, and Xenophobia

xoodlebooks's review

dark emotional reflective tense medium-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Mental illness, Murder, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Emotional abuse, and Child abuse

Moderate: Drug use and Drug abuse

Minor: Islamophobia, Addiction, Xenophobia, Stalking, Sexism, and Racism

heebeegbs's review

adventurous challenging sad fast-paced

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

4.0

Adored this book because it a challenging insight into an incredibly complicated character. The ending felt So right! The only thing I could have asked for was more action !

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Medical trauma, and Violence

Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, and Kidnapping

Minor: Suicide attempt

piscero's review

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Murder, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Addiction, Drug use, Violence, Mental illness, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Kidnapping, and Grief

Minor: Physical abuse and Suicide attempt