Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - Jackal

Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Jackal by Erin E. Adams

10 reviews

clarklyn's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-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? Yes

3.0

I have lots of complicated feelings about this book. I really enjoyed the first part of the book but then it fell off the rails for me and I got lost. I don’t think it knew what it wanted to be…thriller, true crime, mystery, horror?

It seemed like it was thriller/true crime but then I got ambushed by supernatural horror at the end. I wanted to like it, I appreciated the authors perspective and introspection on being a Black woman. However, to be honest, Liz wasn’t a super likable main character, although I was rooting for her and got incredibly frustrated with every obstacle she faced. The “best friend” was SO cruel to the main character but then they pick back up like it was nothing? Mel left Liz in the woods, the woods Mel KNOWS Liz is terrified of, after throwing her phone into the brush…what an absolute fucking asshole!!?

Sometimes the internal narrative was overly lyrical and flowery. It felt very forced and inauthentic and just isn’t my type of writing I don’t think. We spend more time in the main characters head than we do in the story.

Another aspect to this review is that I listened to the audiobook which I would not recommend for this book. I think my experience would have been much different if I had read it and maybe I will give it a second chance one day. The narrator struggled when reading the dialog. The sentences ran together and it was incredibly difficult to tell who was saying what at times. Her voice, while pretty and soothing, was very hard to follow and listen to in regard to the story. She was very soft spoken and mumbled her words sometimes and I just couldn’t follow at certain points.

I almost DNF’d at one point because I was so confused and frustrated. I powered through and while I didn’t *not* enjoy the book, it just wasn’t my favorite and I was left more confused than anything.

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roxanne_blythe's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative mysterious reflective sad 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

I love this book for all of the commentary that it makes about race, gender, and relationships.

This book is about a bunch of black girls that go missing in the woods. And it’s very interesting that this town. nobody talks about the fact that so many black girls have gone missing in the woods. It gets swept under the rug.

And as Liz is trying to uncover the lore of the town, it becomes supernatural???

Like I knew that there was someone doing this, but also a hinted at a supernatural being in Liz’s dreams.

I still don’t understand the symbolism of a shadow being taking the souls of black women. Like the way, I understood it was that these girls black girls in general or creators of the culture. That wouldn’t be an American culture without the contributions of black women. And how people just take and take and take and from black women until there’s nothing left.

That’s the way I interpreted it, I don’t really understand why she picked a jackal of all creatures. Also, Anubis? Don’t know where that’s coming from. Like one of the girls and her mom had a fascination with ancient Egyptian history, so maybe that’s where it came from??

Honestly, everybody in this town is a suspect all white people were suspicious to me. I did think Nick and his father had to do with it. And then I realize Doug had something to do with it when it was revealed by Kerstyn, his wife that his father lost a job at a steel mill, and I was had a book started.

Chris also a suspicious to me but he turned out to be innocent. Actually I take that back. Nobody in this town is inside the fact that everybody was complacent in the kidnapping and murder of these girls. Pisses me off and it’s actually really upsetting because this happened in real life.

I think we’re the book kind of lost me was once Lucy was revealed so this shadow being existed since the 1920s, but they didn’t actually start taking girls until 1985. What didn’t really make sense to me was if Lucy was a black girl or not because her narrative was giving very much white girl… or I could just be Jack but I’m reading as a white woman.

I can’t really give this book a rating just yet but I did really enjoy it. I think I kind of lost the plot. When’s Lucy was revealed, and we found Caroline.

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faithfulgoddess87's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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sjbshannon's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious 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

4.75

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livlamentloathe's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

This was a great story about racism, lost girls, stories, and secrecy. I loved the split between Liz’s POV and the mysterious chapters about all the missing girls. It reminded me a bit of an Alex North novel. But I liked the messy nature of this. The way everything didn’t wrap up prettily and there’s still a lot of unanswered questions. But for once, not in a bad way. In a realism kind of way, where there’s clearly more coming for the characters of this world, but those details don’t matter or take away from what the reader experienced.

Infuriating! But in a well-written way. I hate white people so much. It’s unfortunate to be lumped in with such a defensive, intolerant race. Ugh and cops. ACAB forever. I think Mindhunter season 2 was the first time I truly recognized police inadequacy when bipoc lives are involved. When I was young, I really thought the duty of the police was to protect us. ALL of us!! I miss that level of naivety sometimes cause situations like that of Liz in this book scramble my whole brain. The way she saw things so clearly and the “justice” system can just decide “uh no actually.” I have so much privilege to even acknowledge this as if it’s still new to me. Autistically, I just fucking wish everything would stop and shut down and reboot better. That the system wasn’t built around inequality and instead cops would DO THEIR JOBS. And racism wasn’t learned or inherited but was actually as unlikely as white people expect it to be. I read this back to back with Bad Cree and the whole notion of “we have to do this cause the cops won’t” has been a big theme of the week.

It’s too bad Liz didn’t make a different decision at the end and go tear out the throats of the entire negligent racist police department.

Get wrecked, Doug.

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macleanbridie's review against another edition

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dark mysterious 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

4.25

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dustghosts's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this— easy to devour and I found myself hanging on to the mystery. The writing style struck a strange balance between being too straightforward (telling not showing, as the phrase goes 🙄) and too vague, which left me a bit unsure at the beginning. The story and themes feel big, ambitious, like they are tackling a lot of different, lived aspects of classism, racism, and misogynoir at once— some more successfully than others. I actually quite liked the supernatural aspects, here— my only complaint being that I think the author could have left them more open-ended/vague, as I think what lets that part down is the same aspect I mentioned earlier (too clean to be unclear, too vague to be satisfying). This is a bit of a romp and appropriately troubling and thoughtprovoking throughout.

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