Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Yellow Jessamine

Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling

7 reviews

hexedmaiden's review

dark fast-paced

3.0

Another book on my list from 2023 that involved some plant horror. In this book we follow Evelyn Perdanu who is the sole heiress to a company in the fictional 1800s. Besides being a rich company owner she sells plant concoctions on the side. Some seem for medical reasons and others. Soon bodies start popping up around her and we later find out why.

This story was definitely not what I expected. I knew it was spooky, set in the Victorian era and there was queer rep. I was shook that there was plant horror, or rather our evil monster was made of plants. The ending was bittersweet and I wish it was more of a happy ending but all in all I still enjoyed it.

Content Warnings

reka111's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Something had come back on her ship, looking for her. And it was spreading

This book was so fucked up, but in the best sense of the word. I wouldn't really say it won me over, but by the end when everything became clear to me, I enjoyed it a lot more, especially after I found out why this book was given that title (imaginary what can I say). This book was very dark and scary, basically it was a bit similar to The Poison Diaries in terms of atmosphere, but not quite.

The characters were relatively okay, but I especially liked Evelyn (the main character) because she was closer to a

villain

than a hero and I could identify with her surprisingly easily, because it is very rare to read from this point of view. Perhaps I simply understood her suffering, I understood the reason for her actions, and looking back, I would do the same now. Unfortunately, the others didn't really get a role, so I can't write about them. The love story was a bit forced for me (there wasn't really a love story), but it was cute.

It was a good book, but the content was equal to zero, we stumbled through all 135 pages, which is exactly why it took me longer than usual to read it. As I said, the plot was boring, but at least it was interesting and most of the chapters ended with cliffhangers, which kept my spirits up.

This wasn't the story of a grieving widow or a witch, it was a woman's story who did bad things in a bad world but did everything she could to keep her soul.

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