Reviews with content warning for Death - Sorrow & Bliss

Reviews tagging 'Death'

katierobertsonshaddix's review

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mysterious slow-paced

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

1.0

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readersreadingnook's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

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alexisgarcia's review

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad 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? Yes

4.5

this was such an amazing portrayal of mental illness and the effect it has on the people around you. it just was a little slow and monotonous at points :/

the ending was amazing though

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eeviee's review

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dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.5

This is the kind of book you read to remind you of how much you love reading. The kind that you revisit from time to time and still feel gutted by. That one book you read at different stages of your life and find yourself identifying with another character you were least likely to feel any affinity with. It is a character study of a deeply flawed woman in an equally flawed relationship, and how she comes to mend herself in more ways than one.

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ashlyntalksbooks's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
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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bookish_daph's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny inspiring sad 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

I can’t quite put into words how much I enjoyed this book. An all time favorite. The entire time I was reading a movie played in my head and I just sat back and watched these characters. If you are looking for an accurate portrayal of mental health in a book; this is it. One of the things I also loved is how the main characters perspective on things especially her relationships with her family is shown to the reader when she’s younger and morphs with the story as you read along. There was no point that I wanted to put the book down. One second your heart strings are being pulled the next you are laughing, then you are angry. Such a range of emotions. I’m already looking to read the rest of Meg Masons’ works because this writing and story telling is the reason I love reading so much.

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_inge's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I had such high expectations of this book. I love character based stories, I enjoy reading about mental health and the writing style seemed to be Rooney-esque. And everyone else seems to love it too. So then why didn’t I?

I think a big part of it is knowing from the start how this book will end. There’s nothing to read towards to. I’m all for character driven stories, but the only conflicts and meaningful interactions appeared in the last 50-100 pages or so. There was nothing to drive the story; Martha only figures things out late in the book, and it’s only then that we see characters engaging with her issues and the story can really come to life. Especially in the early stages of the book I felt so bored, everything I read felt so pointless. The main characters felt very neutral too (Patrick didn’t feel likeable nor did Martha feel unlikeable, as I’ve seen reviews describe), I think because they were described in a passive tone, so this entire book blended together into a neutral blur.

I think the pacing is another aspect that felt off. Every sentence was incredibly long, stretching 4 lines at times. Often these parts felt trivial to the story as well. There were shorter paragraphs to break things up, but these often contained information which added nothing to the story or characters whatsoever.

When Martha does finally get a diagnosis for her mental illness, and the story seems to get interesting, it’s described as ‘ - ‘. We read about her finally getting an assessment, we read what people around her think of her illness, and Martha spends time googling her symptoms and coming to terms with what this diagnoses means to her. It’s probably the most important part of this book, so then why isn’t the diagnoses stated? Is it so the author can make a statement about how you can still be an awful person, as one of the characters remarks?! At the end of this book there’s even a note that this mental illness is a fictional one, the treatments and symptoms are all made up. Why?? The novel emphasises the importance of labels and diagnoses, the entire book is based around mental health - why would you make up a mental illness? Especially one that’s so rooted in reality?! If this was meant to be a statement of sorts, I fail to grasp why the author makes us curious as to what the illness actually is by having Martha discuss it with others and exploring what it means to her - surely if it wasn’t about her specific illness you’d leave all this out, because now we will speculate on what it could be.

I really wanted to DNF this but I stuck through it to figure out why this book didn’t work for me. Though the story became more interesting as it went on, the ‘ - ‘ diagnosis part frustrated me too much to even enjoy the final segments.

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