Reviews tagging 'Blood'

The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni

141 reviews

hapalyn's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective slow-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

4.0

This book [felt] predictable; however, I also found myself surprised by certain reveals. It's like I had this ominous feeling that something was supposed to happen with certain characters, but I didn't really know what. Yet, the reveals also weren't surprising.

This book had me gripped throughout the story; it really felt reminiscent of YA fantasies I read as a younger teen but can't connect with now. However, with that being said, I really enjoyed our FMC and her personality. It feels so found family. 

The ending really threw me for a loop because I feel like it makes you reflect on the entire story like.... why didn't this show in her personality and choices? It really was a reveal you can't look for throughout the story, it's simply revealed to you, the reader. 

Even with the 'lows' of this book, I found myself enthralled and would recommend to someone who wants a fun fantasy with elements that make you feel cozy and invested. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Blood, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Terminal illness, Torture, and Fire/Fire injury

missgarceau's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

3.5

This book hooks you immediately! It’s a really easy and binge worthy read. The plot twists are very fun. The puzzles and quest for answers is very intriguing. 

It’s dark and checking TW’s is recommended- but it’s not shock value graphic or unnecessarily brutal in descriptions. The author paints the picture without overdoing it, and I appreciate that.

I had a few mild annoyances but those were mostly “me” problems that I don’t think would bother most people.
1) The plants/science:
It’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine when high fantasy uses real world elements inconsistently along with high fantasy elements unique to the world. The world building was really lacking for me in this regard. 
2) How I met your mother: 
Another pet peeve of mine is pop culture references in high fantasy. This just 🤦🏼‍♀️ All of it was so pointless or could have been done in a way that didn’t make me cringe at the very obvious ode to/copy cat of the show. 
3) miscommunication trope/ betrayal trope/ secret identity trope/ enemies to who knows- just all my least favorite tropes.
4) Space invasion: 
Some very intimate moments for the main love interest happened in a very unlikely moment and very cringe worthy scenario considering the circumstances and it completely undid all the butterflies/ character development I felt up to that point.

My biggest issue is probably world building & character development- but it’s very addicting. Despite my grievances, I find myself itching to read the second book ever though I will probably hate it, based on where the plot is going. 

Is this a romance with an HEA? The answer might determine my willingness to continue- honestly.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Police brutality, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, and Pandemic/Epidemic

lisa_m's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No

3.25

I've been looking forward to reading this book ever since I first heard of it and I finally did read it as a buddy-read. When I started this book I could barely remember what it was about, I just knew I used to really want to read it.

My thoughts on this book are quite complicated. I did not love the majority of the book. Most things that happened felt either like complete coincidences or out of our protagonists control. She was just there for the ride and the few decisions she did make did not make a lot of sense to me. She constantly needed to be saved and I just felt like I didn't have enough information about anything. A huge part of this book is 1. descriptions of the prison and how horrible it is in there and 2. Kiva trying to find a cure for this mysterious illness spreading around the prison.

When she finally finds out what happened to the dying prisoners it is by pure coincidence.

A very important part of this book are the 4 trials Kiva has to survive. I hoped that these would be interesting but instead it just felt like we're waiting for them to finally happen. The trials themselves are basically just Kiva being put into a situation that is impossible to survive, and then getting rescued.

The majority of the time while reading I was almost bored and waiting for something unique and surprising to happen. I did not understand any of the main characters or their relationships and we got barely any information about them. Things seemingly happened at random just to make a good story and to drive the plot forwards. Kiva also always made wrong assumptions about everyone to the point where you can pretty much assume all her assumptions are false.

BUT all of this boredom and indifference change in the last 50(?) pages. We finally get answers and information that make the whole story make sense. Certain actions get explained so they don't seem as random anymore and it's honestly very intruiging and I was hooked. My problem is that those last few pages don't make up for how I felt throughout the rest of the book.

I really liked the relationship between Kiva and Tipp. It was the one that made the most sense to me and I found it really sweet. I also liked Naari even though we got so little information and I always knew that there was something missing which made it frustrating to read. The same also goes for Jaren. For me personally the idea of keeping all relevant information until the end for the big 'aha' effect did not work out at all because it just made me more frustrated. At the end it just felt like I was being lied to throughout the entire book because important information has been kept from me which was the reason I did not understand what was going on or why people are reacting the way they do. So all in all it kind of feels like this book tried to be smarter than it is.

I think 3.5 stars is very justified considering all that. Still, now that I'm intruiged and I FINALLY know what's going on I will be reading the sequel as well. I hope it will keep up the intruige and perhaps I will really like the second book. It definitely has the potential to be good.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement and Abandonment

Moderate: Addiction, Death, Drug use, Gore, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

tabea1409's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Sexual harassment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

myahthebookfiend's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense 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? No

5.0

oh. my. god. I adored this book with every fiber of my being. the writing style was perfection. the characters were perfection. the plot was perfection. the end was perfection. this book was perfection. it took me longer than most books I read to finish for whatever reason, but that doesn't diminish how great it was. I thought the beginning and part of the middle were kind of slow, but given the whole plot line, it makes sense. that slowness doesn't account for any negatives. I saw people praising this book up and down and left and right, so I thought, "Hey, why not give it a shot?" take it from me: the praises weren't lying. I'm 100% reading the rest of the series.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Death of parent, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Addiction, Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Self harm, Sexual assault, Torture, Grief, and Sexual harassment

tinybluepixel's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Physical abuse, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Rape, Self harm, Sexual violence, Torture, Vomit, and Sexual harassment

callistag1's review against another edition

adventurous emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Confinement, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Vomit and Grief

alexisdillon725's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense 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? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death and Torture

Minor: Addiction, Child abuse, Confinement, Drug abuse, Blood, Medical content, and Death of parent

bookrecsplease's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A

4.0

This is written definitely in a younger YA style than I typically enjoy. The narrative frequently gets redundant from over-explaining, and basically anytime something is shown, it’s then immediately told as well. Although a lot of the subject matter is definitely mature, the audience is definitely more of a mid-teenage group, and is really successfully written for that target audience. 

Still, I came to really fall in love with the characters and Noni did a really good job of introducing lots of different mysteries/questions as the narrative went on, even if most of the answers were obvious to me as an adult reader.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Torture, and Abandonment

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Blood, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Sexual violence, Vomit, Suicide attempt, and War

cepbreed's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

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

3.0

This book disappointed me in the beginning, I’d say up until 60% in I wasn’t hooked. It’s all so cliche, the most classic YA tropes converging in one novel. You’d think that’d at least make it entertaining from the get go but it just felt so overly familiar there was no intrigue left to get me invested. I will say that once the action picked up I couldn’t stop reading (but I was also on a plane so it’s not like I had many other options). Naari is the best character in my opinion, what a badass. Kiva and Jaren I could honestly care less about. Speaking of Jaren, what kind of name is that in a fantasy setting (yes I know it gets explained but still). Only one character actually annoyed me rather than being subjected to indifference: Tipp. I HATE written stutters with such a passion and I don’t know why. 

The myriad of plot twists weren’t always the most creative

(I mean Jaren as the prince was obvious early on)

but the last twist was lacking in the opposite sense. The earlier twists were predictable thanks to tenants of the genre, but the last one lost me. I mean there was hardly any build up. Of course Kiva

has to be a “chosen one” of some sort but I prefer her as a healer only, but that may change if I read the second book.

Recently I’ve had such an issue with never continuing series, there are just too many books I want to read. To my credit I started this thinking it was a standalone. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child death, Confinement, Death, Gore, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail