Reviews with content warning for Murder - A Botanical Daughter

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock

19 reviews

piperclover's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-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? Yes

4.0

I have so many pages of notes about this book and yet I have no idea how I feel about it. This is by far the weirdest thing I have ever read and I wasn't even sure I would finish it. I don't know if this is a 4 star, I don't know if it's a 1 star, I don't know if it's a 5 star. I'm so confused by this book and the characters and my thoughts and my experience.

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renorsomethin's review

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dark emotional funny slow-paced

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

4.25

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augusto_aaa's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-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

Please read this. Oh my GOD, that ending. 😭 Every character is such a lovable asshole and each one goes through a complete and satisfying character arc. Great gothic horror. Some truly unsettling stuff goes down in this story. Awesome setting! Would highly recommend to all plant nerds, and fans of taxidermy! I wish I could write a more coherent review right now but I’m just going through so many emotions because OH MY GOD THAT ENDING!!!

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krholin's review

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

2.25

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bebidocrimes's review

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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

4.25

A bit softer than I was expecting but such a delightful read! Medlock entrances with his environments, this greenhouse sounds like another world, so luscious and enticing. I feel like a few things tied up a bit too nicely and the looming consequences to their choices didn't feel like they held much weight.

Salting the earth just being assumed to stop the spread and not seeing anything to contradict that felt like a missed opportunity, and the murders don't seem like they mattered to the community at large so the secret was easily kept.

I wish we'd gotten to see a bit more of Chloe and Jennifer's relationships' early development, but the entanglement in the end was fascinating! Maybe I was looking for a more ambiguous/ominous ending, but overall it was so fun and I'm glad I grabbed it on release day! I never say I *want* a movie adaptation, but please give this to Guillermo del Toro.

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wynwicket's review

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

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amaranth_wytch's review

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emotional mysterious medium-paced

5.0

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readingpicnic's review against another edition

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2.0

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Titan Books for providing me with a digital ARC of this book.

Firstly, the plant and mushroom descriptions in this book were so incredibly interesting. Seeing the way that the main character built a body with plants that react in different ways to touch was very cool. I love fungal horror books, and I think the premise of this story was very creative and interesting. Although I understand why this book is compared to Mexican Gothic, I think that their similarities end with them both including fungal horror due to some weird racialized comments that I mention later in my review. Mexican Gothic engages with race, eugenics, and colonialism in such a deep and interesting way, whereas this book…does not.

I did have a lot of issues with this book, mainly with the characters’ actions not making sense to me, or their characters just being inconsistent with how they thought and acted. There were many times when Simon or Gregor would just take a complete 180 in how they view Chloe, and it never made sense to me why their minds had changed so suddenly. The characters also felt pretty flat to me unfortunately, so I felt a disconnect between myself and the story while I was reading, which definitely tamped down my enjoyment. I got the impression while reading that the author wasn’t taking the story that seriously while writing it because it felt so jokey most of the time while I was reading it, even in scenes where that didn’t seem appropriate for the moment. He was also noticeably overusing the word “queer” in a derogatory way, probably as a nod to the queerness in the story, but he did it too much to the point where I got annoyed. The scenes between Chloe and Jennifer were pretty great, and I liked their tension and chemistry, especially in that final scene with them! On the other hand, I sensed no chemistry between Simon and Gregor and their relationship didn’t make much sense to me (which was maybe the point?)

There were also some Orientalist undertones throughout this story with Gregor, a white guy, going to Sumatra to “discover” the magical/sentient fungus that he takes home by tricking a sultan into thinking it’s hallucinogenic (and implying that the sultan may have consumed it and died so that Gregor could steal it)?? He then goes on to exoticize the fungus and Chloe for the remainder of the story, referring to it as the “oriental fungus” and “grotesque arabesque.” There was also a scene where Chloe was trying to sing and he said “her notes were a long way away from Gregor’s Western diatonic major scale. Her warble was heavily ornamented with chromatic grace notes and weird resonances, more at home in an exotic call-to-prayer than in a bel canto singing lesson.” Like…huh? I couldn’t tell if this Orientalism and exoticization was intentional because Gregor is an unlikeable main character, or if the author was just unconsciously including weird colonialist attitudes. Either way, it felt gross to read these types of phrases as the story didn’t seem critical of their use.

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thesapphiccelticbookworm's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.25

Thank you to Netgalley and Titan Books for a copy of this book.

To the Victorian London society, taxidermist Simon and horticulturist Gregor are two odd bachelors living together, but secretly they're much more than friends. When Gregor acquires a fungus that shows signs of intelligence he combines it with a recently corpse.

Gregor, Simon and their botanical daughter, Chloe along with housekeeper Jennifer form an unconventional family. However can a being such as Chloe be contained and kept secret?

This is a queer, gothic horror, but it managed to funny and cozy at times. Medlock poses many complex ethical and philosophical questions. I really enjoyed this world, and am looking forward to exploring more Medlock's works in the future.

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