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Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

دوشیزگان by Alex Michaelides

151 reviews


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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Kept me guessing, but eh… The Silent Patient was way better.

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fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Compared to The Silent Patient this was a disappointment. I was hoping to be on the edge of my seat the entire mystery but to put it plainly… I didn’t care for the characters or the suspense of figuring out who the murderer was. I listened to the audiobook until about 60% in.. and at that point I skipped to the end. Check the  trigger warnings before reading this book.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark mysterious sad 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

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

this story follows marianna, the aunt of zoe, a student at cambridge university. zoe calls marianna in a moment of desperation when young girls are being murdered at her college, and zoe is convinced that the girl’s processors, charismatic edward fosca, is behind it. marianna is convinced that fosca is the reason for the deaths of these girls, and she’s determined to prove it.
so many great elements (at least in my opinion) in this book. it’s dark academia, a mystery, thriller, and has underlying themes of greek tragedies. 
his storytelling is great, the plot is super intricate and he manages to make everything piece together in the very end. when i got to that point in the book, i had to set it down and needed a minute to process. he truly puts you into the protagonist’s (marianna) headspace and we make the connections alongside her.
there’s a twist at the end that i wasn’t suspecting, even as someone who enjoys thrillers. he throws out different characters that could be the killer that send the reader on mini spirals, trying to piece together how they could have done it, and that just adds to how great the moment of realization/unmasking is of the real killer.
only minor complaints is that while his cast of characters is diverse, all the poc characters are just in the background. i wish we got more on officer sangha.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark mysterious tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

It was all going so well...

I wasn't a huge fan of Alex Michaelides' last bestseller The Silent Patient but the premise, the cover and the allusions to classics in The Maidens convinced me to give this latest work a try. 

I enjoyed the picture of Cambridge that the author paints and I was drawn into the initial mystery but I encountered the same issue with this book as I did the last one, the twist at the end is utterly ridiculous and ruined the book for me. Having set up at least three potential suspects, all of whom had just enough in common with our villain to keep them in the circle of suspicion, Michaelides plumps for an unexpected almost telenovella-esque twist
(It turns out that our protagonist's dead husband was actually a psychopath who had been screwing her niece and had supposedly concoted a plan to kill several univeristy students to disguise the murder of his wife, the protagonist, so that he could be with her niece. He then perished on a holiday before the plan could be carried out so the niece takes it upon herself to enact the plot without him... even though they won't be able to end up togther even with her aunt dead as he is also dead..)
which for me was just too much and ruined my enjoyment of the story up until that point. 

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