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ssweeny's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
The children are placed with their aunt Josephine who is defined by her fear of everything. It's a bit of a change of pace from the first two. Josephine's fear of everything comes off a bit one-note, even among the typically clueless adults in the series.
Olaf's plot is pretty obvious from the start too.
There is a scene that stands out with a bit of gratuitous transphobia and fatphobia as well.
Despite all that the relationships between the siblings and the fun of watching them work to free themselves from their situation make up for a lot and leave this a pretty enjoyable story.
Olaf's plot is pretty obvious from the start too.
There is a scene that stands out with a bit of gratuitous transphobia and fatphobia as well.
Despite all that the relationships between the siblings and the fun of watching them work to free themselves from their situation make up for a lot and leave this a pretty enjoyable story.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fatphobia, Transphobia, and Murder
Minor: Suicide and Death of parent
maggieoc_x's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse and Death
Moderate: Death of parent, Gaslighting, Stalking, Suicide attempt, and Violence
Minor: Kidnapping, Abandonment, and Fire/Fire injury
mckiheather's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder, Death, Suicide, Violence, Abandonment, Grief, and Mental illness
Minor: Death of parent and Animal death
lilshelly's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
I didn't like this one as much. There are always weak stories in a series. What really upset me was the way they integrated a character that was briefly mentioned in the previous books - a character that looks neither like a man nor a woman. These passages did not age well at all, with the children flopping between addressing the person and even calling them "it." Yeah, definitely would benefit from revision at this point.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Death, and Transphobia
Moderate: Grief, Death of parent, and Suicide
inkdrinkers's review
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
“There are few sights sadder than a ruined book.”
The Baudelaire orphans are back and more miserable than ever. Following the events of the Reptile Room, the three children find themselves relocated to a distant relative's home on a dark lake. But with Count Olaf hot on their heels, they must navigate more than murky waters and terrible guardians.
Unfortunately, the above quote from this book is right. A sadder sight is returning to an old favorite and realizing it aged really, really poorly. I remembered the Wide Window not being my favorite of the series as a kid - what I didn't realize was that it's because unlike the first two in the Series of Unfortunate Events, it has nearly no bearing on the rest of the story. Everything that happens to the orphans in this book has no plot relevance, and it's tied up in a nice little package with some transphobia and fatphobia just... for fun, I guess?
I'm not going to reiterate what many other reviewers have said about the transphobia and fatphobia in this book. It's bad. It made me nearly DNF and it's honestly kind of sad to return to these pages and realize how poorly it's handled. I will say the audiobook didn't even help ease the misery because Daniel Handler was the narrator. I set out for a good time with Tim Curry and instead got... this.
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and move on to the Miserable Mill. But just know I'm listening to these 2x speed to get back to Curry's narration. (which starts back up for book six and carries through to The End)
Content warnings: Death, Transphobia (pretty rough, refers to a character as "it"), Murder, Grief, Death of parent (past), Suicide, Fatphobia
The Baudelaire orphans are back and more miserable than ever. Following the events of the Reptile Room, the three children find themselves relocated to a distant relative's home on a dark lake. But with Count Olaf hot on their heels, they must navigate more than murky waters and terrible guardians.
Unfortunately, the above quote from this book is right. A sadder sight is returning to an old favorite and realizing it aged really, really poorly. I remembered the Wide Window not being my favorite of the series as a kid - what I didn't realize was that it's because unlike the first two in the Series of Unfortunate Events, it has nearly no bearing on the rest of the story. Everything that happens to the orphans in this book has no plot relevance, and it's tied up in a nice little package with some transphobia and fatphobia just... for fun, I guess?
I'm not going to reiterate what many other reviewers have said about the transphobia and fatphobia in this book. It's bad. It made me nearly DNF and it's honestly kind of sad to return to these pages and realize how poorly it's handled. I will say the audiobook didn't even help ease the misery because Daniel Handler was the narrator. I set out for a good time with Tim Curry and instead got... this.
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and move on to the Miserable Mill. But just know I'm listening to these 2x speed to get back to Curry's narration. (which starts back up for book six and carries through to The End)
Content warnings: Death, Transphobia (pretty rough, refers to a character as "it"), Murder, Grief, Death of parent (past), Suicide, Fatphobia
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Transphobia, Murder, and Fatphobia
Moderate: Grief, Death of parent, and Suicide
mikaelaandherbooks's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Death, and Grief
Minor: Death of parent
joisaddler's review against another edition
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, and Violence
ashleycmms's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Death of parent, and Grief
Moderate: Blood, Child abuse, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
booksthatburn's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
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? It's complicated
3.0
The Baudelaire orphans are passed to yet another relative, this time to a woman who lives on a rickety clifftop house overlooking the lake where her husband drowned.
I like how well-developed the relationships between the siblings are. The books are short so there isn’t a lot of room for it, but most of the space available is used for interactions between them as they deal with whatever misfortune has happened next. Aunt Josephine is a pretty one-note but understandable character, she’s yet another adult who seems completely unable to help or fully understand what’s happening and why it’s bad.
There’s a sequence involving one of Olaf’s accomplices, the one where the children can’t tell if they’re a man or a woman. The whole scene is a mess of transphobia and fatphobia, with part of the terror derived from Violet not knowing what pronouns to use, and not knowing whether they should be addressed with “Sir” or “Ma’am”. Given that they are helping Olaf, the children’s inability to guess their gender should be irrelevant to their characterization as probably evil, but instead the whole thing is handled badly and it brought my enjoyment of the story to a screeching halt. It makes as much sense as justifying fright from not being able to determine someone’s hair color, and it’s just bad. It’s combined with fatphobia, using language like “monstrous” and “creature”, commenting on their size as an additional frightening characteristic. As their terror increases the text begins referring to the person as “it”, further dehumanizing them. They’ve never spoken, which also seems meant to be scary, and at minimum reinforces the dehumanizing characterization.
Other than just being the next step for the children, this doesn’t wrap up anything specifically left hanging from the last book. The storyline is new and has a major thing that’s introduced and resolved. It leaves a few things for later books to carry on. The narrator didn’t change and continues to ominously talk about his own life and the children’s fates. It could make sense to start here, but there’s important backstory about Count Olaf as a villain and the children’s situation until now which is best conveyed by the earlier books.
The plot is good, it has a great setup and execution. There’s a pretty cool mystery that the kids have to figure out, and it’s one where the reader genuinely can solve it along with them. Olaf’s latest scheme hits a great balance between horrific and absurd, which is tonally appropriate for the series. Mr. Poe is useless, as always, and Aunt Josephine is handled in a way that makes her flaws understandable even as they’re exaggerated to a ludicrous level to make the situation as bad as possible for the Baudelaire orphans. I found myself enjoying it a lot until the transphobic and fatphobic sequence happened. Unfortunately it was even worse than in the first two books, and so I can't recommend this one at all.
I like how well-developed the relationships between the siblings are. The books are short so there isn’t a lot of room for it, but most of the space available is used for interactions between them as they deal with whatever misfortune has happened next. Aunt Josephine is a pretty one-note but understandable character, she’s yet another adult who seems completely unable to help or fully understand what’s happening and why it’s bad.
There’s a sequence involving one of Olaf’s accomplices, the one where the children can’t tell if they’re a man or a woman. The whole scene is a mess of transphobia and fatphobia, with part of the terror derived from Violet not knowing what pronouns to use, and not knowing whether they should be addressed with “Sir” or “Ma’am”. Given that they are helping Olaf, the children’s inability to guess their gender should be irrelevant to their characterization as probably evil, but instead the whole thing is handled badly and it brought my enjoyment of the story to a screeching halt. It makes as much sense as justifying fright from not being able to determine someone’s hair color, and it’s just bad. It’s combined with fatphobia, using language like “monstrous” and “creature”, commenting on their size as an additional frightening characteristic. As their terror increases the text begins referring to the person as “it”, further dehumanizing them. They’ve never spoken, which also seems meant to be scary, and at minimum reinforces the dehumanizing characterization.
Other than just being the next step for the children, this doesn’t wrap up anything specifically left hanging from the last book. The storyline is new and has a major thing that’s introduced and resolved. It leaves a few things for later books to carry on. The narrator didn’t change and continues to ominously talk about his own life and the children’s fates. It could make sense to start here, but there’s important backstory about Count Olaf as a villain and the children’s situation until now which is best conveyed by the earlier books.
The plot is good, it has a great setup and execution. There’s a pretty cool mystery that the kids have to figure out, and it’s one where the reader genuinely can solve it along with them. Olaf’s latest scheme hits a great balance between horrific and absurd, which is tonally appropriate for the series. Mr. Poe is useless, as always, and Aunt Josephine is handled in a way that makes her flaws understandable even as they’re exaggerated to a ludicrous level to make the situation as bad as possible for the Baudelaire orphans. I found myself enjoying it a lot until the transphobic and fatphobic sequence happened. Unfortunately it was even worse than in the first two books, and so I can't recommend this one at all.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Transphobia, Grief, Fatphobia, and Murder
Minor: Suicide, Animal death, Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, and Death
CW for anxiety disorder.andrea_h111's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death and Death of parent