Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Small Angels by Lauren Owen

24 reviews

exlibrisabigaillee's review

emotional hopeful mysterious sad slow-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? It's complicated

3.5

The lesson didn't stick with me as well as I thought it would. The characters were likable enough, I just didn't resonate with them super well. The story was very fun though, and I enjoyed the world!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Violence, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Child death, Death, Blood, and Murder

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Lesbophobia

One of the main families, the Gones, is very strict and emotionally abusive throughout the novel. One of the daughters finds solace with a friend who is very controlling and possessive. The Gones are in leagues with a spirit, of sorts, who

was a child murdered on the property years ago. His death is described

. (See the previous spoiler for murder & child death/abuse tw.) He is

the possessive friend of the daughter

. There is a vague child/minor relationship in the sense that

the spirit, who takes the form of a boy the daughter's age, died as an adult and is not truly a child

.

torturedreadersdept's review

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Mental illness, Torture, Blood, Grief, Stalking, Murder, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

mandkips's review

dark mysterious 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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Blood, and Murder

Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Violence, and Grief

Minor: Car accident

debussy's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

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

1.5

Wound up being too slow, too bound in extraneous detail to be interesting, with a plot that was too simple for the amount of drama it commanded. POV characters sounded too similar to one another, and the writing was pretentious when it wasn’t dull. Ultimately not for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Blood, Murder, and Toxic friendship

lovelymisanthrope's review

dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

2.5

I picked this book as a Book of the Month pick because it sounded like a gothic mystery about a small town with big secrets. 
"Small Angels" follows a young girl named Kate who finds solace in the abandoned church in the forest: Small Angels. Kate is the first person to become close to the family whose secret Small Angels hides. Now, Kate has returned to the small town for the first time in years and the forest has come alive again and is demanding to be heard. 
The writing in this novel is amazing. The author's ability to compose prose that is gothic and hauntingly beautiful is admirable. However, this book was paced too slowly for me as a reader.  The writing itself can also feel dense at times, which made me disconnect from the characters. By the time the story picked up and some of the mysteries were revealed, I was so bored I did not care.
This book is well-written, but it was not for me. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Death, Violence, and Murder

beckyg1016's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Death, Violence, Blood, and Murder

vigil's review

dark emotional mysterious reflective 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

2.5

it adequately met my low expectations. i’ll add a longer review eventually.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

courtneyking713's review

dark emotional 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? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Murder

mgdoherty's review

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

This book carved me open and scooped out the contents of my heart and then rebuilt me. At its heart, it’s about generational trauma, about generations of abused children and drunk parents and unloved daughters and murdered siblings and loved ones gone too soon, all while Mockbeggar Woods preside over the village, as old and powerful as gods. I love the writing style and how each characters’ voice is so distinct. The format was beautiful and really suited to the magical fairytale feeling; multiple characters told their stories or part of their stories as we moved through the main plot, and each chapter both added to the main story and also felt like a complete fairytale in and of itself. 

This is such a tender story. There is so much tenderness and forgiveness here. Forgiving yourself for being a child who didn’t know any better, forgiving yourself your selfishness, and offering grace to everyone including yourself. And refusing to live in the story someone else wrote for you, because that someone else maybe didn’t write your story from a place of love, but a place of resentment. 

Definitely a new favorite book here. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Murder

Minor: Child abuse

Content warning if you can’t handle reading about buried alive (but also it is not REALLY about being buried alive). Spoilery details here:

so the ghost remembers inhabiting his body *after* he was dead and buried, so while he wasn’t really buried alive, his memories sort of feel like he was still alive beneath the ground. And other characters will sometimes “feel” his memories of being underground, sometimes very very viscerally to point of coughing up soil. (Coughing up soil only happens once though.)

ekmook's review

adventurous dark 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Blood, Grief, and Murder

Minor: Car accident