Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - The Crash by Freida McFadden: A Thriller That Will Keep You Up All Night!

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Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

The Crash by Freida McFadden: A Thriller That Will Keep You Up All Night! by Freida McFadden

246 reviews

alyssawhite97's review against another edition

4.25

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

vereadsbooks's review against another edition

2.5

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Freida McFadden knows how to hook readers from the beginning. Her books are easy to read, and they entertain.

Tegan is eight months pregnant. She's alone and desperate to leave her old life behind. She plans to stay with her brother until she figures out what to do with her life. While heading toward her destination, a snowstorm catches her stranded. Trapped in her car with a broken ankle, Tegan is rescued by a couple who offer their cabin as shelter until the storm passes. But what seemed like a safe haven could turn out to be dangerous for her and her unborn child.

The book reads quickly, and the short chapters help to fly through it. However, it felt like a formulaic thriller.

The writing style itself feels very on the nose. The author wants an unreliable narrator, but Tegan's constant paranoia and suspicion of everyone become repetitive and exhausting. The situation is already tense and frightening, but the protagonist's incessant thoughts about being in danger and not trusting anyone feel like an over-explanation. It's as if the book is telling us to be scared, instead of letting the situation create the fear. This constant back and forth, where Tegan says she's scared but then tries to convince herself she's overthinking, only to end the chapter with a revelation that confirms her fears, feels like a narrative trick that gets old quickly.

The book has two POVs: Tegan's and Polly's. The problem is that they often narrate the same scene from different perspectives, which defeats the purpose of having distinct POVs. Tegan makes assumptions about her experiences, which Polly's chapter reveals to be entirely unfounded. This undermines Tegan's perspective, making reading the pervasive, unfounded paranoia tiresome. Furthermore, having Polly's point of view takes away a lot of mystery from the entire post-crash plot.

I did enjoy Polly's chapters. She is so crazy that it makes me laugh. Tegan, however, is too repetitive and paranoid. But she is intelligent, doesn't sit still, and is decisive. Seeing her plotting against her capture and being smart about it was refreshing.

I'm not disappointed, but I'm not impressed either. It's a fun ride, but not a memorable one.

Content Warnings

mbedrosian's review against another edition

2.5

challenging dark tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

faithemt's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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: Yes

HIGHLY recommend!!!

Content Warnings

alexakirby's review against another edition

1.75

not my thing but a fun, quick read. I feel it reads as more of a first draft a lot of editing needed to happen and didn’t. also extremely predictable. “Little tuna” and the baby voice were so incredibly annoying and hearing tuna over and over annoyed me.

Content Warnings

applepie_u96's review against another edition

3.5

emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The second that I read this was a thriller based on a snowy road trip, I downloaded the audiobook. Something about road trip thrillers (Five Total Strangers, Five Survive, etc.)...

I'm actually glad this book wasn't cliche. There were some plot twists that I genuinely didn't expect. Somehow, though, Freida made the plot twist a small thing that easily could have been overlooked. I'm not sure, but maybe it was a bit rushed at the ending. I don't know. I'm not a published author.

I liked the characters, though, and Tegan's connection and love for Tuna. The name she chose in the end was low-key hilariously white-girl though (I'm white too..).

Overall, I wasn't on the edge of my seat too much, but I definitely was interested enough to want to keep reading. It was a good book.

While I think it does fit into the thriller category.. maybe... It wasn't too thrilling or crazy or terrifying, except for maybe the expectation I had for the hammer scene.

I own the rest of her books and I'm sure I'll read them too.

Content Warnings

schunter11's review against another edition

1.0

slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I should have dnf’ed this one when Tegan started referring to her unborn baby as “little tuna”.

Content Warnings

acn168's review against another edition

3.75

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Characters had me wanting to punch them through the screen
Rollercoaster of assumptions

Content Warnings

jsteinke's review against another edition

2.0

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: N/A

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Inconsistent narrative with the plot that didn't make much sense. "The incident" wasn't as juicy as they made it out.
Twist at the end was nice.

Content Warnings

thegreatnoodles's review against another edition

3.5

dark mysterious tense medium-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

Overall I enjoyed this book, but the start (and the epilogue) I didn’t particularly like. At the start, before anything bad has even happened, the author keeps trying to fake you out with scary scenes that never eventuate. In universe, our protagonist has every right to be paranoid (given what’s happened to her before the story starts + being pregnant), but it felt cheap and honestly quite silly at times. Every single character our protagonist sees she immediately fears the worst of and devoted two-to-three paragraphs catastrophising about.

The larger middle of the story (Parts II through to IV) are where the story shines better, although I am annoyed we still live in an age where mental health and infertility are vilified for easy horror story villains. Someone suffering from mental health is FAR more likely to hurt themselves than others, and the handling of sensitive topics (

suicide

) in this story falls very short of being respectful.

However, I found it refreshing to see multi-POVs used for a horror, even if a lot of the story hinges on misunderstandings that could have been resolved if people actually spoke to one another. The characters’ actions felt consistent, except for Tegan’s boot.

The twists were either too obvious, or the hints were done really well and I got them all. Hard to tell how much I was meant to be shocked by.

Content Warnings

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