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ravensandlace's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
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A special thank you goes to Netgalley and Doubleday publishing for allowing me to read this eARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
I requested this book because it reminded me of the Water Cure with the cover and the synopsis. Upon reading this book, I discovered it was written in a similar way too. It was very prosey and descriptive. But that kind of hindered me from truly understanding what was going on for the first 100 pages or so. Once I got used to the writing, I was able to enjoy the book more.
But I am a bit disappointed. I expected something different. I mean, I kind of got what I wanted but I wanted more of it. It didn’t go far enough with the creep and sinister factor. I wanted more fits from the girls. I wanted confusion and despair of what was happening to the girls. I wanted this to go a lot further than what it did.
I did enjoy having Caroline as a narrator. She was so unreliable and I liked it. I never knew what to believe and that upped the creep factor by a lot. I truly couldn’t trust her at all. I never knew whether she had the girls’ best interest in her heart or if she had something more sinister up her sleeve. She made it hard to sympathize with her but I still rooted for her. While Caroline wasn’t my most favorite MC, I enjoyed her nonetheless.
I have to mention one part that truly disturbed me and will probably disturb a lot of others. So take caution while reading this particular part. It goes on for several pages. In the 1800’s, the “cure” for hysteria was bringing females to orgasm. Doctors did this by hand. I don’t think I need to go into any more detail. So there's a part where underage girls were subjected to this treatment multiple times.
Overall, this was a good book even though it had some flaws. Like I mentioned above, I wish it had gone more sinister. I would have easily rated this 4 (four) stars had the author just upped the creep factor. Besides that little issue, I did enjoy this book and am read more by this author.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Bullying, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Death, Eating disorder, Grief, Infidelity, Medical content, Medical trauma, Pedophilia, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Suicidal thoughts
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