Reviews with content warning for Drug abuse - La casa de los espíritus

Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

La casa de los espíritus by Isabel Allende

23 reviews

laurenw's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional

3.75

My best friend rated this as 'too much realism, not enough magic' and that is v apt.
A multi-generational story about an intriguing family who appears to have drawn in every kind of trauma possible, the book is not bad, but it is chaotic. For all the claims of this focusing on a matriarchal line, and we do follow 4/5 generations of daughters, all the events in the book are framed through the perspective of 1 man, who is not a pleasant character. Obviously books can be enjoyable and still center a problematic character, but the role of Esteban (plural) throughout the story detracts from the spirit of the women this story should have been about.
Ultimately, fell flat for me, but the political background and its rich cultural depictions were its shining grace.

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tomyelland's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

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

4.75

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smuds2's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

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

4.75

So close to a 5, there were just some gratuitous scenes that I felt didn’t add to the characters portrayed in them.

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notallbooks_mp's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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karydiazc's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.5

Reading this book was both amazing and heartbreaking.
This is the first book I've read of Isabel Allende and I think these words will stay with me for a long time.

The book starts comically, with fun stories about the family, with sad and almos cruel things woven in between. To be honest I had a really hard time reading the book because those first chapters seemed to go really slow and nothing seemed to be really happening, however things started to move ahead and it started to get interesting.

I must say I loved almos every character (with obvious exceptions) and found the family history and generations to be quite interesting.

I've never really been interested in politics so when that part of the books started I wasn't sure what to expect, but characters such as Clara, Blanca and Alba made it worth reading along.

Now, the last few chapters were so hard to read. Not because they were boring or anything like that, but because of how crude and realistic they were. It's so hard to think that Latin America has been going through that for many many years and along several countries. Even now, it feels kind of close, even though nothing like that is happening apenly in my country (and hopefully won't happen, at least any time soon)

As I said on the beginning, this book was wonderful to read despite everything, however I would recommend anyone who wants to get into it to first read the trigger warnings, since there are a lot and some are very graphic, specially towards those final chapters.

Content Warnings