Reviews - Lone Women | The StoryGraph

4.41k reviews for:

Lone Women

Victor LaValle

3.84 AVERAGE

robinudell's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

sunstreamer's review against another edition

5.0

"Why else would a girl as strong as her be born into this family, if she wasn't meant to yoke the thing they'd been punished with?"

"Did he want to shoot this girl who liked to dress as a boy? The child whose mother only wanted him to be happy? Imagine that. Imagine that."

constant_reader_19's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional mysterious 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: Complicated

This book was amazing! The setting, the characters, and the super creepy plot…all AMAZING! 🤩

mcdannyb's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

aquagirl111's review against another edition

3.75

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

luckythenoun's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous hopeful sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I always enjoy Victor LaVelle's storytelling style. It's a lot of "side quests" as some described it, but I find he's great at weaving them together. I think it's more reflective of life than just a very straight forward single line style of plot that is more common. I did think the creature could have been built up more, I found myself sort of forgetting about it in favor of characters I liked more. In his way they are all fleshed out so it's easy to want to spend more time on someone.

It's very grounded in the setting which I find hard to do with a lot of magical realism type books. And it's a fairly quick and easy read. It's not my favorite of his (The Changeling was beautiful) but it was a nice way to read Black books for BHM. I think the magical elements weren't as fully explored as I'd like, because the characters engage in a kind of radical acceptance that threw me a bit.

Content Warnings