Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Where Sleeping Girls Lie by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

17 reviews

thebookdragon_taylorsversion's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious 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? Yes

4.75

I hope we get more stories of this world 
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shugentobler's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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? Yes

5.0

Another win by Faridah in my opinion! When opening, this book was immediately VIBES. Dark academia, autumn, mean girls. I loved it! 
And who was my favorite? Definitely Persephone. Giving Prudence from CAOS, girl slayed me when she said for Halloween she wouldn't be
going to a party, but watching all the Halloweentown movies
girl after my own heart! 
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sprklngglassslipper's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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? Yes

4.5

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lovelikethiswillendintragedy's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-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? No

5.0

Absolutely wonderful :0
I was worried for a bit that a trope that I *despise* (
A male love interest that’s covered in red flags but still ends up with the main character
) would happen, but nope!
The guy is actually a creep, and way worse than what she thought.
I feel kind of bad for being relieved, because the outcome was way worse for the characters that were involved, but I am just so damn tired of the alternative where
the guy is really such a good guy and everything’s fine with him.
 
But enough about that. The characters are wonderful, I thought it was interesting that the iconic popular girl trio wasn’t mean like I was preparing for them to be. They’re actually really sweet and it reminds me a lot of my school!
I loved Baz’s reactions to things, he managed to be the lighthearted “funny character” while still being down to earth and bringing the focus back to Elizabeth when necessary. Absolutely wonderful chaotic good boyo and I love him with my entire heart.
All in all, this book wasn’t what I expected. (Don’t get me wrong, I expected to love it, just not for it to play out the way it did.) The themes the author intended were strong throughout the book, and I read it in like a week, it was so good. 10/10, Baz can steal my soul if he wants, he deserves it
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iridescentdreams's review against another edition

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dark mysterious 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? Yes

5.0

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ckflaherty1's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-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

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bookishbette's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense 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

5.0

Outstanding. Somehow even better than her debut when I truly thought it was impossible to top.
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shadeyc's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional relaxing sad tense slow-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? Yes

3.75

3.75 
Well. That was intense. Oooooh did that give me the feels, and unsurprisingly made me mad at the patriachy all over again. 
I loved the beginning, that first chapter really got me, I'm always sucked in by Àbíké-Íyímídé's writing. But, and it's kind of a half hearted but, I did feel like this book went on a bit long. 
I was right there with Sade for most of it, and then I started getting tired. And then I got frsutrated, and then mad, and then tired again. 
I get the slow burn suspense is what drives this book, but I think the middle got a little bogged down, and we would still get hit by all th revelations and impact even if this was a little shorter. 
PS. Persephone for Prime Minister! 
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fatimaelf's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-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

3.75

I think my expectations for this book were unfairly high, so when the book met me halfway, I ended up disappointed anyway. 

Not to say the book was bad! It very much was not. In fact I think it was an important book for the story it told and the way it told it. Certainly it isn’t the first book I’ve read that attempts to tackle the most insidious problems of schooling systems everywhere, but it did a good job at portraying the helplessness and fury that children are faced with when they note a problem, be a missing girl or something else, and bring it to the people meant to help, sworn to help, but who choose to do nothing instead for whatever reason — indifference, apathy, righteousness, self-interest. 

So the story itself was good; it felt like a Mean Girls meets Wednesday type novel, combining drama and crime with the backdrop of teenage drama and angst. I think the book was a little too long, maybe by fifty or a hundred pages — the mystery dragged on at points in the middle, and the stakes never seemed to be well established until the end. I think trying to keep the twist a mystery was what made the book lag a lot, and obscured Sade from the reader too much. I wasn’t a too impressed with the twist itself (it’s not a trope I’m a particular fan of) and I didn’t think enough groundwork had been laid for it to have been a good enough payoff. 

Again, I think that it resulted in us not being able to truly get to know our main character, beyond the laundry list of facts like where and how she grew up, and her relationship with her parents. When there’s a secret that big, one that shapes who you are as a person, and we don’t know about it, we can’t know the shape of the main character at all. Disguising it with ghosts that aren’t as intriguing as they needed to be didn’t really cut it. And it made her reactions to things feel either confusing or overblown, because we don’t know why she’s acting that way at all. 

On top of that — look, I get that she’s a high school girl who’s been severely sheltered all her life. But was she dropped on the head as a child? Did she undergo a sudden affliction of severe amnesia? There were far too many instances of Sade conveniently forgetting either something she’s been told or something she’s seen, or something she was meant to tell  someone else. I wanted to shake her, because, girl, aren’t you supposed to be, I don’t know, PAYING ATTENTION? And okay, I get it, she’s incredibly traumatized and her trauma response seems to be disassociating, but she didn’t ever disassociate when she found key evidence, or when it came time to connect that evidence. She just seemed to FORGET. I’ll give her grace for it because I really do think it’s probably a result of the combined effects of above — isolation, trauma, teenage-hood — but that didn’t mean I didn’t roll my eyes, because the alternate explanation is that it was done for plot purposes. 

As for the other characters: I liked Baz a lot, but he didn’t really contribute a whole lot except his very presence being the engine that kept the vehicle of the investigation into Elizabeth’s disappearance going. Sade appeared to do the majority of the legwork in trying to find her, even if ultimately the whole quest was kind of useless. And though I really wanted to like Persephone, and really did in the few moments we got to know her, we ultimately weren’t given enough information about her to actually know who she was at all. The only thing I know about her is that she’s pretty, she has two friends, and her mom’s career is in art somehow. Despite that, the romance was cute, because there was clear tension between Sade and Persephone and they had a flirtiness that felt genuine. August was actually more fleshed out than I anticipated he would be, which made Sade’s journey with him very compelling, even though it wasn’t the largest part of the story. I wish we’d gotten to know April more, considering her ultimate importance, but don’t begrudge Àbíké-Íyímídé for either choosing not to (or not being able to) spotlight her more — and the same with Juliette, who felt very background. 

The ending was…well, part of me understands that it’s the most realistic ending for the world we live in. I get that that’s probably how it would happen in real life, and appreciate that that’s portrayed, sweetened with a little bit of hope for the future, because it emphasizes just how important the story and message are. Part of me, though, feels marginally betrayed, because sometimes I don’t want the cruel reality of the world in my fiction, and instead want what could be, and how it should be. It takes away nothing from the book, but the conclusion was more of a sigh than a bang. 

To its credit, I spent the whole book trying to resist the urge to figure out what was going on by skipping to the end. I got some parts right, and some parts wrong, but I wanted to know the whole way through how it all pieced together, which was the result of Àbíké-Íyímídé’s skillful maneuvering of the set pieces. If the editor had trimmed it just a bit, it could have been a consistently tense mystery, but even without that, the mystery was enough to keep me going. 

I’ve read Ace of Spades, Àbíké-Íyímídé’s debut, and enjoyed that; and I did, for the most part, enjoy this as well. Both stories were important, and good enough to back that import. I genuinely mean it when I say I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next. 
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mariecaat02's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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