Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

Sundial by Catriona Ward

77 reviews

sasisaskia's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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livlamentloathe's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Until Rob and Callie got to Sundial and the flashback story started, I thought this was going to be an ableist story about mental illness. But it’s not that simple. It’s twisty in an unpredictable way. There’s enough going on that I was tricked into not knowing what would happen next! I’m typically ahead of the twist and find myself disappointed to have been right. But book isn’t about “a twist.” It’s not even a multitude of twists, although kinda. It’s a whole lot of fucked up normality that stewed in the heated desert of Sundial until finally… you know.

This was a very long book, and I wasn’t interested at turns. I put Baby Teeth down for the very reasons I didn’t enjoy the start of Sundial. But this story swerved past the ease of mom and daughter dislike each other. It kept going and going and going. When you think you know the truth, there’s still more buried. And ya know, isn’t that just the way (of people)? We’re all more complex than what others see us as. Callie doesn’t know everything about Rob, and Rob doesn’t know everything that is Callie, or Jack, or even Annie. The only simple thing is Irving. Trust a man to be violent and predictable. 

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booksandcoffeewithlexi's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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annie_reads_books's review

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dark emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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asolis's review

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adventurous challenging mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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heartofhorrors's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5


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reggiethebird's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

It's a thriller, alright. Vivid imagery throughout, and the plot twists and turns till the very last page. Plot twists can sometimes feel unearned, but I think here they were all reasonable, and nothing felt too out of place by the end.

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_jaybee_'s review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.0

I'm a fan of Catriona Ward, and this book definitely has the same great writing and creepy-plot-with-heavy-nature-influences format as her other works. However, I nearly DNF'd around page 150 because it dragged when the flashback portion started and there were a couple of things that just weren't my personal taste/preference:

1) I usually love how she treats nature as its own character, but I have a personal vendetta against the desert after living there a few years 😂 so I was not enjoying reading about it.
2)There's also a plotline about
medical experiments with dogs
that was hard to read as an animal lover.

But overall still a well written book with 2-3 twists I hadn't anticipated so glad I finished it.

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bxnnny's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

another crazy ass book by catriona ward that i will be thinking about for a long time. if you've read the last house on needless street, you know how nutty her writing is, but it's such a ride. this book goes back and forth between the past and the present, slowly piecing everything together. it becomes pretty clear at a certain point the major, key details but how it all came to be might not be what you expect. i couldn't tear myself away from this one, i was just truly enthralled in this story. the ending will leave you much like how you might have felt at the end of inception. please keep in mind there are A LOT of heavy trigger warnings in this (mainly animal cruelty/abuse/death and domestic abuse but there's many more so please check them all). i likely wouldn't have read this if i didn't already know catriona ward's writing previously to prepare myself mentally or hadn't been so interested in the story to be willing to push through.

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antimony's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

ok see . i really liked the past chapters and i liked the end a lot. but like. why was it set up the way it was? like a lot of present then a huge chunk of past interspersed with 2-page chapters of present then a lot of crazy stuff happening in the present plus the little excerpts from rob’s stories which serve us nothing at all. i wish the past and present chapters had been more dispersed from each other. and for the longest time i did not like callie or (present) rob. and i wish we’d had more time in the past i thought that part was quite interesting! also the unsettling desert vibes were simply not there.

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