Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Contagion by Erin Bowman

12 reviews

el_wheel's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious 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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Chronic illness, Confinement, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Medical content, Self harm, Suicide, Blood, Gore, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Violence

devareads's review against another edition

mysterious tense fast-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? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Pandemic/Epidemic, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Body horror, and Gore

f18's review against another edition

Once they started fighting zombies vs just investigating the mystery my interest steadily waned. I wanted the action scenes to be broken up by more scientific investigating, but as soon as we got back to that it immediately transitioned to zombie fights so meh.

I was also having trouble distinguishing which POV I was currently in, which seems to be an issue I saw people mention who had read the audiobook, so if you do want to read it maybe physical or ebook is the way.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Blood and Gore

Minor: Suicide

brittanylee0302's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.25

This book was ROUGH. I was really looking forward to this book because of its great ratings, & honestly the only reason I didn't DNF was because of the ratings being so good. This book had so many flaws, it was YA & while I usually don't mind that, it bothered me that so many people were in positions that seemed unrealistic for their ages & seemed even more unrealistic because of the way they communicated with each other. Very much screamed YA & not the good kind. The chapters were the worst though, 40 to 65 pages in a chapter was just too much for me. There were such better ways to break them down, which brings me to my next point. The povs were a little confusing & messy & I didn't care to read them all especially when they weren't main characters. & the abbreviations that weren't explained at all or were explained to late to be useful really iced the confusing cake for me. If you aren't a usually sci-fi reader, you probably will spend a lot of time confused, I know I did. That all being said, this book was also very very predictable but despite that, I was still invested. Just not sure if I was invested enough to read the next one. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Murder, Blood, Death, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Suicidal thoughts

its_madi's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Body horror, Death, and Blood

clrouse's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Minor: Blood, Murder, Medical content, Death, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Death of parent, Gore, and Abandonment

bluejayreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.0

 I can't help comparing this to Dead Silence, because the concept - small crew who really shouldn't be there investigating somewhere deep in space where all the people who were there died horribly and whatever killed them might not have left - is almost exactly the same. I expected it to be space horror, but it's really more of a thriller. It takes them less than half the book to figure out what must have happened, and the rest of it is trying to survive and escape. And overall, it was good. Not spectacular or outstanding, but very readable and quite enjoyable. There were way too many focus characters to get particularly attached to any of them, but none were bad. The ideas were fantastic (turns out I like space horror quite a bit), I loved the setting, and the execution was solid. I probably will read the sequel - not because I'm desperate to find out what happens, but I have enough casual interest and I like the ideas enough that I would like to see where it goes. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Body horror, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Gun violence, Suicide, and Gore

Minor: Death of parent

terminal illness

cait's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Abandonment, War, Violence, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Murder, Medical trauma, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Suicide, Gun violence, Death, Cursing, Confinement, Blood, and Body horror

dlrosebyh's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• 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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Blood, Body horror, and Violence

Moderate: Chronic illness

Minor: Suicide, Addiction, and Medical content

carmexfiend's review against another edition

dark tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Contagion is a fast-paced soft science fiction YA with multiple POV characters about a small group trying to survive a rescue mission gone very wrong. There's two explicitly queer women (one of which is a POV character) and I liked the dynamic between them. The team seems pretty racially diverse, but the story doesn't dive deep into their backstories since everyone is mostly focused on not dying. There's no romance in the book and the whole thing is very focused on action, which I liked. Based on how it ended, I do wonder if there will be a romance in the sequel.

My only quibble is that the premise lost a lot of its spark for me once it's confirmed that the contagion is

bacteria that causes most people to become zombies and some people to get super-powers like super-speed and telepathy

. It was partly expected but it became a little hard to believe. But it is a action YA so I can't really fault it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, and Death

Minor: Suicide, Medical content, and Addiction

Explanation for the blood, body horror, and death warnings:

This book has zombies that are created by an alien pathogen. The transformation is explicitly painful and involves a lot of blood and convulsions. The zombies do not have any of their original personalities left.