Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Dark and Deepest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore

7 reviews

colorcrystals's review against another edition

emotional mysterious 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

This was an absolutely stunning, powerful, enchanting story of self-acceptance of identity and love. 

The story is presented in two timelines and 3 points of view. Lala is a Romani girl in 1518 forced to hide her heritage and her love for the trans boy her aunt has raised. The second timeline is in the modern day, with our narrators being Emil and Rosella. Emil is Romani, and has purposefully not learned his family’s history to distance himself from it. Rosella is Latina and proud of her family and heritage, but still strives to fit in with the other girls. 

I have to be honest, it took a little bit for me to really get into the book. But once I hit like the 50% mark, I was hooked. The prose is absolutely gorgeous. The terms “rich” and “lucious” come to mind. This is a very lyrical, poetic style that made the audiobook particularly nice to listen to. It artfully tackled topics racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia in the most perfect way. The characters were wonderfully developed and multifaceted. My only issue was that it took so long for me to get truly sucked in. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Misogyny, Racism, Grief, Lesbophobia, Sexism, Classism, Homophobia, and Transphobia

Moderate: Death and Death of parent

Minor: Pregnancy and Antisemitism

zombiezami's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Misogyny, Sexism, Child death, Grief, Racism, Xenophobia, Racial slurs, Injury/Injury detail, Death of parent, and Death

Moderate: Blood, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, Confinement, Antisemitism, Self harm, Transphobia, Classism, Hate crime, Homophobia, Pandemic/Epidemic, Bullying, Outing, Sexual content, Cursing, and Genocide

Minor: Sexual violence, Cultural appropriation, and Rape

sarahaf712's review against another edition

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Deadnaming, Death, Homophobia, Pregnancy, Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, Outing, Racism, Sexism, Cultural appropriation, Hate crime, Misogyny, and Transphobia

Minor: Biphobia, Classism, Colonisation, Dysphoria, Genocide, Acephobia/Arophobia, Death of parent, Lesbophobia, and Police brutality

ehmannky's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad 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? Yes

4.5

Gorgeous. An absolutely gorgeous read, but then I expected nothing less from McLemore. Split between the 1518 and a modern day American town that has a hint of magic about it, this book delves deep into historic and cultural memory, the ways that racism and xenophobia are experienced and internalized by those who suffer from them, how to heal from these experiences by relating to others and finding community... There's just so much here. And it's all told in McLemore's gorgeous prose. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia, Racism, and Racial slurs

Moderate: Death of parent, Death, Child death, and Grief

drp_moonlight's review against another edition

tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I really wanted to love this book. I first encountered Mclemore's writing in the anthology All Out through their story Rojas which I absolutely loved. I was so excited to read a historical fiction with queer characters that was also an adaptation of a fairytale. But what I found instead were bland characters, slow pacing, and repetitive phrases. 

The book alternates between 3 POV characters (Lala, Emil, and Rosella) but the extremely short chapters cut into each character's limited development. On top of that, Alifair (Lala's love interest) was ignored almost until the end. Emil and Rosella are supposed to follow the trope of childhood friends to lovers but there is nothing to actually develop them as such. They barely interact until they are together.

The writing dragged on and on without going anywhere. It took nearly half the pages to get to the plot. I was bored out of my mind half the time. The only time I left my stupor was when McLemore would reuse the phrase "given a girl's name at birth". When I first read this phrase in Rojas, I was enthralled by it's magic but by the 5th time in this book I was annoyed. 

The ending was sweet, though unrealistic, but this is a fairytale after all.

In conclusion, read Rojas instead. It's the same plot with better writing and pacing. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Religious bigotry, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Death of parent and Blood

Minor: Sexual content

booksthatburn's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-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

I was not already familiar with "The Red Shoes", but I love this as a retelling. It takes most of the parts of the original and remixes them in beautiful ways. DARK AND DEEPEST RED takes a pretty judgmental story about a girl harmed by wearing red shoes (i.e. being very visible and ostentatious, among other social implications) and transforms it into one about reclaiming family history, personal heritage, and self-confidence as a marginalized person (and does so in two different eras). I liked this a lot and I definitely recommend it. I read the original short story before reading DARK AND DEEPEST RED because I wasn't already familiar with it, but unless you're a completionist there's no need to do that.

As a brief aside: it’s fascinating to me that one of the realistic and very believable parts of this book is the dancing plague. They’re real things that have really happened at different times in history (including Strausbourg, 1518), but they fit right into the magical feeling of this story. 

The chapters are on the short side and rotate pretty consistently between the three main characters, only breaking the pattern a couple of times. I sometimes felt stymied because just as something really interesting was happening in one section it would end and switch to the next narrator, but towards the end the switches started really working for me and I liked the effect a lot better. It’s a structural choice that leads to some pretty cool transitions between sections as they are thematically linked (two perspectives share a time and the third does not).

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Misogyny, Transphobia, Homophobia, Racism, Blood, and Death

Minor: Ableism, Antisemitism, and Death of parent

CW for ableism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, antisemitism (backstory), racism, blood, parental death (backstory), death.

harperhoney's review against another edition

adventurous dark hopeful 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? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Death, and Mental illness

Moderate: Body shaming, Death of parent, Death, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Sexual content, Transphobia, Xenophobia, and Grief

Minor: Bullying, Deadnaming, and Hate crime