Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Water Shall Refuse Them

<spoilers>Hm, i have to say i didnt rly see the twist or the ending coming, i was 100% convinced from the the start that she was gonna kill someone to even out petras death but i rly thought it was gonna be lorry, i mean get it bestie mally deserves it tbh, honestly was not a fan of the magpie bit tho

‘I think, in a way, there is something attractive about death, a glamour that attaches itself to those who have experienced in and which makes it appealing to those who haven't.’

‘’Oh, I'm no heathen, Mr Vaughan. I just have my own beliefs. Beliefs that are different from yours and that you can't abide.'’

‘The sun was coming through the window and casting his face into shadows and I thought then that was the reason the sun was so bright, it was to make the things in the shadows so much darker and hold their secrets away from the light’

‘I had a well-developed moral code, even at that age.’

^hmm do you?

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mariexcelsior's review against another edition

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dark tense

Loveable characters? No

3.5

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doubledagger's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-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

0.5

Feels like a short dragged out to novel length. Meandering and just sort of empty.

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cphunter's review against another edition

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5.0

McKnight Hardy’s writing is unbelievably good. She creates such ominous, tense atmospheres without relying on any tropes and without tipping her hand. The reader is always left in the dark (so to speak, as this book is set largely in bright daylight in the middle of a heatwave) but teased with details that slowly build up the outline of the bigger picture. The plot points start to fill it in and before you realise what is happening, you’ve been hit between the eyes with a gut-wrenching creepy situation.
Her characters are unnerving and the whole book is unsettling.

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