Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Lying in the Deep by Diana Urban

5 reviews

themoodreader's review

mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death and Violence

Minor: Death of parent, Sexual content, Murder, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Fire/Fire injury, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Alcohol, Blood, Death, Violence, Drug use, and Gaslighting

savreads28's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious 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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Vomit, Violence, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Addiction, Blood, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death, Car accident, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Drug use, Gun violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Grief, Murder, Stalking, and Toxic relationship

haleybre's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Blood, Death, and Addiction

Moderate: Death of parent, Grief, Murder, Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, Child death, Gaslighting, Violence, Gun violence, Infidelity, Fire/Fire injury, and Drug use

reading_under_covers's review

2.0

After her best friend steals her boyfriend, Jade is more than ready to set sail on the Campus on Board ship where she’ll be studying and traveling for four months. However, when her backstabbing friend and ex show up, things take a turn for the worse as students start dropping like flies.

LYING IN THE DEEP by Diana Urban is a twisty, locked-room, destination thriller with a wide cast of characters.

I find it hard to review this one because I really enjoyed the first quarter of this book - it had everything I love in a YA thriller, and was just an overall fun time!

But things took a nosedive starting with the way the characters behaved and were portrayed. They’re meant to be college-aged, but are extremely immature and naive, which both annoyed me and made me question a million of their actions. 

On that point, I love when characters go all armchair detective on me, but our main girl, Jade, seemed to go a little over the top and had me scratching my head at where any of her sense of logic was coming from.

The twist was fun, until it also felt a bit outlandish and forced…

I’m definitely an outlier here, but if you pick this one up, prepare for a wild ride either way.

Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin, and Razorbill for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Publication Date: May 2

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder

Moderate: Death, Death of parent, Suicide, Drug use, Alcoholism, and Addiction

beckyremillard's review

mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.25

Jade is a college student boarding a semester at sea (Campus On Board/CoB). She’s excited to see the world and get some time away, until she sees her ex-best friend and ex-boyfriend also boarding the ship. 

The first half of this book and the second half feel like completely different stories, held together by the same annoying main character.

She stabs someone and is like “oops, sorry, didn’t mean to, I’ll go to therapy”?! How can anyone stand to be around her?

The first half is incredibly whiny and I barely got through it. Obviously I knew what was coming from the description and the prologue, but it was hard to get through. 

Things started picking up in the second half and everyone was a suspect of something. Once I got to that point I read it in one sitting because it was captivating (albeit not the most believable). It was just brutal getting there. 

Also, everyone sounds like high school students. I know is classified as YA, but they sounded like 16 year olds, not 20ish year olds who had been in college for a bit already. 

I will say the ending was interesting, although I think that an epilogue could have worked here to wrap up one final loose end. 

Thank you to NetGalley and PenguinTeen for a chance to read and review this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, Murder, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Death of parent