Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

12 reviews

chelle22's review

challenging dark mysterious tense

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Deportation, and Pandemic/Epidemic

mariposagal's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Blood, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Confinement, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Stalking, Toxic friendship, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Addiction, Child abuse, Child death, Drug use, Physical abuse, and Sexual assault

gracescanlon's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gun violence, Sexual violence, Violence, Medical content, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcoholism, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Blood, Grief, Stalking, Gaslighting, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Racism

moonbasket's review

emotional funny mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.0

To be honest, I found the book mostly boring. I only finished it because the audiobook was pretty short and I wanted to see how the real world storyline resolved. It wasn't too much of a mystery and the novel portion of the story was more of a supporting character to the narrative between Leo and Hannah than a full story on it's own.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and it's nuanced and less nuanced analyses of how a story is affected by the author and vice versa. Some parts were feather-light and I felt accomplished for seeing them and noticing the themes. Other parts were extremely heavy-handed and felt a little silly to read. 

I think having the "real world" elements be restricted entirely to correspondence was a really smart move and really pulled the book together. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Violence, Blood, Grief, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Infidelity, Sexual content, Medical content, and Classism

Minor: Addiction, Child death, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Racism, Sexual violence, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Deportation, and Pandemic/Epidemic

One of the main characters describes and incident from their past where a younger sibling dies in an accident. Another describes a childhood incident where a beating from a parent has pedophilic overtones, but there is an intervention before anything beyond physical violence occurs.

justagir1's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Toxic relationship, Violence, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Classism

Moderate: Gun violence, Stalking, and Gaslighting

Minor: Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Blood, Grief, Cultural appropriation, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Pandemic/Epidemic

librarymouse's review against another edition

funny mysterious fast-paced

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

4.0

A book within a book within a book made for a wild and very engaging read. I finished it in a day.

the novel ending with Leo, whose storyline seemed to be constantly unfinished, waiting for Winifred and Marigold made the whole thing more meta. For Freddie to be seemingly stalked by the Leo that Leo the murderer praises Hannah the author for creating was such an interesting way to fold the layered universes in on themselves! Leo the murderer stalking the author who then wrote a Leo the character stalking Winifred the author character who was friends with Marigold, the stalker of Whit, who had done an unsettlingly large volume of research on Cain to try to exploit his mom's shoddy lawyering into a pullitzer makes for a very interesting web of morally gray people. I did want Leo the character's story to be tied up more. He's still characterized as helpful, which I think ads an interesting tilt to the story being told about Leo the murderer and Hannah the author and the impact of what he gave her on her writing. But I want to know more about the reasoning behind the cupcakes and the groceries. Is it flirting, stalking, or friendship? I wasn't expecting for Leo the murderer to be a racist, but using that racism and vitriol to show his descent into delusion was interesting, especially in how that morphed from what could be perceived as advice on US perceptions of race and how it impacts jnteracrjoms with the police.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Racism, Sexual content, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Pedophilia, Violence, and Police brutality

arkwen452's review

challenging emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.5

The lady in the library was an interesting read. I gave it the rating that I did, because in my opinion, it is a slow paced book. There is a position between a story within a story with a story. The writer writes the book the lady in the library, and it's about a scholarship student in Boston from Australia, writing a novel but lacking inspiration. However, screen runs out in the library causes a friendship to form between four occupants, including our self. That begins the story or the first story the story. We follow Freddy as she grows closer to the other three individuals and romantically becomes involved with Kane. Kane has various secrets in his past , that as a story progresses, paints him as the obvious suspect. The only reason that Kane is not immediately pulled by the police is Fred's belief in his innocence and canes determined conviction to find out who's behind the set up and not be convicted again. Only the outer skirts of this in or in our story there is this "" beta, reader, or editor, that is reading the story for the , inner story author Hannah. It isn't until about 50% into the book that readers discover that there are two stories being told consecutively. The beta reader, or I saw him as an editor. Leo is not who he is pretending to be. So, as the reader is following one mystery, another mystery unravel in the form of Leo's identity, and , his actions as they point to more vivid and gruesome details. I think this book was OK overall. It struggled to come together for me in the beginning, and some of the humor felt stale, but I did enjoy following Freddy and Kane on their seemingly hopeless effort to clear his name. I was trying to hold out hope that there wouldn't be a cliché that he was lying to her the whole time, and luckily things turn out different than , one might expect. There were a lot of things or elements in the story that I found predictable and made notes as I was reading of these things, and they turned out to be true. I think I would recommend this book to other mystery readers if they two were. Just so they could see the parallels of the stories being interconnected like a spiderweb, because the small details in the story that involves Freddy they linked with the bigger details of Hannah, the inner writer, and the " beta reader", Leo.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Violence, Stalking, Toxic friendship, and Pandemic/Epidemic

purplepenning's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Sexual assault, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Stalking, Murder, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

kyrstin_p1989's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

A murder mystery within a murder mystery, this is a solid thriller. The real killer was hiding in plain sight and was so painfully obvious that I didn’t even consider them as a candidate. The characters are mostly likeable and diverse. The plot is believable. The end was good but arrived to with little pomp or circumstance. There are some glaring spelling/grammar mistakes throughout that are a bit annoying but all in all a solid book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Infidelity, Racism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

chaotically_katie's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

2.75

It had so much potential, and it’s such an interesting style of writing. But the lack of focus on the murder victim, and the main plot point of the scream, really disappointed me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Racism, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Stalking, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail