Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

Take It Back by Kia Abdullah

8 reviews

megelizabeth's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.0

This book is pretty much pure pain. It's not one to go into lightly, and it has a lot of content warnings, which I would recommend checking even more so than usual. It's definitely one that's going to stay on my mind.

It's also extremely well-written and tightly-plotted, with a jaw-dropping ending that will continue to haunt me. There's lots of great commentary on many issues, with it never feeling like there are too many topics raised and not enough attention given to each. It took me a while to warm to our protagonist, Zara, but I did come to appreciate her growth, and I absolutely adored her friendship with Safran and, for me, this friendship also plays a really important role thematically in the story.

The main thing I didn't love about this book is more of a me problem than a book problem, as I think it's fairly typical of legal/courtroom thrillers and is one of the reasons I don't read too many of them; it's that there's a big break in time between the beginning of the book and the court scenes, and it felt, to me, as if there was undoubtedly lots we were missing out on. That was probably entirely intentional, and as I've already said, typical of the genre, but it's just something that doesn't tend to work too well for me personally. The only other thing I didn't like and which threw me out of the story a bit was that there's a really odd conversation justifying physical abuse of children, which was so out-of-keeping with the book as a whole which had some really great conversations around abuse, trauma, and difficult familial relationships; it just didn't make sense to me at all why this throwaway conversation should be included.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Child death, Drug abuse, Racism, Ableism, Violence, Bullying, Rape, Child abuse, Racial slurs, and Death

Moderate: Classism, Animal death, Alcoholism, and Death of parent

chkrato's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Ableism, Rape, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, and Murder

linyli's review

dark emotional sad 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Islamophobia, Xenophobia, Rape, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Bullying

whitneyonline's review against another edition

dark reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.0

It was alllmost a 5 star favorite, but then the twist at the end happened and the more I think about it, the more I don't like it (the twist). But overall I enjoyed the book. I liked how Zara is a flawed person with vices of her own. She is frustrated and angry at her culture for what it expects of women, and thus she has a strained relationship with her family. I really like how this book addressed so many relevant, terse issues regarding rape, race, and culture. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Islamophobia, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Religious bigotry, and Sexual assault

mikki_9's review

challenging emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Bullying, Drug abuse, Grief, Hate crime, Islamophobia, Misogyny, Murder, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Toxic friendship, Violence, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Addiction, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Drug use, and Emotional abuse

albon's review against another edition

dark tense

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Islamophobia, Misogyny, Rape, Racism, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Sexual violence, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Alcoholism and Bullying

Minor: Abortion, Adult/minor relationship, and Death

yunsq's review against another edition

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Islamophobia, Rape, Addiction, Ableism, Bullying, Sexism, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

kdowli01's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

5.0

 

At first glance, this sounded like a really standard legal thriller, but it ended up being so much more complex than that, and I absolutely loved it. 

Synopsis: Former lawyer Zara Kaleel is a victim advocate in rape cases, and is helping Jodie Wolfe--a white girl with severe facial deformities--in a case against four Muslim boys. Zara being Muslim herself is placed a situation where she wants to see justice done, but is seen as a traitor to her community because of it. 

So, on the surface, this is really exciting, with an ending I did NOT see coming. I'd recommend it just for that. But it was so much more than that. Zara's relationship with her family and the Muslim community is incredibly complex, and that added so much nuance to the story and what the whole process meant to her. In addition being just a really unique voice in the thriller landscape. 

Zara is also incredibly flawed, and that is not glossed over in the least. This is listed as the start of a series, and I'll definitely be reading more to see what happens to her. 

This covers a lot of really tough topics, so CWs galore: racism, islamophobia, bullying, victim blaming 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Rape, Sexual assault, Racism, and Islamophobia