Reviews with content warning for Panic attacks/disorders - Meddling Kids

Reviews tagging 'Panic attacks/disorders'

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

21 reviews

ash_ton's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-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? Yes

3.0

Okay so. Originally I had given this book 4 stars but after thinking about it, I lowered it to 3. I couldn't get past a lot of things no matter how much I liked the actual story.

First, though, no matter how much I complain, I did like the book. I like the concept of the

talismans

even though I know that isn't a novel (haha) idea. I was still shocked and wasn't expecting

the kids to be part of the ritual.

I also wasn't expecting

Dunia Deboen to be involved, nor was I expecting her to be Damian Deboen.

Maybe in hindsight it should have been obvious but *shrugs*. So, despite the things I'm about to complain about, I did like the book because the story itself was good, in my opinion.

These are things I know others have talked about, so I'm just going to be another voice agreeing with them. The random insertion of the script format throughout the book wa sso jarring and unecessary. It did nothing for the storyline. If all the dialogue would have been in script format, sure. But that would've sucked and I would have hated it lol. In the same vein, I hated the amount of ridiculous "big" words added that seemingly were only there to beef up the sentences. Also, the made up words as well. Myriaphonic, as far as I can tell from googling, is not a real word. After some clicks, I found out a miraphone is a type of tuba, so maybe that's what he was going for? But like, bud. Pick something else.
The one random 4th wall break 75% into the book was also super jarring and unnecessary to me. If you're going to break the 4th wall, only doing it once isn't gonna cut it. Is the book self-aware or not?
My one last small gripe is how

Dunia/Damian spoke at the end. Like he was trying to be old but hip at the same time. No one, not even a 200 year old dude, is gonna talk that cringy and weird.

One last thing. I'm confused about the ending. I get that Tim is Sean's great-grandson. Fine. Makes sense. But

the spirit inhabiting Tim says he's been possessing all the dogs and that it got easier when Kerri was at college? And then the spirit makes Tim smile "bittersweetly" and says "It's all been done before." Bro wtf does that mean.

Idk if I'm just stupid, but I don't understand. I don't see anyone else mentioning that part.

Bottom line: I liked the book/story, I just mostly hated some of the writing style. Usually, I can get over that and in this case I did. I'd still recommend it, especially if you like Scooby Doo and/or retellings.

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bri_fabiano's review against another edition

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adventurous 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

3.0

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daffodilcherry's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced

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

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

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

4.5

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epeolatri's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-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

5.0

This has very easily become one of my new favorite novels. I loved the author’s writing style and humor. Each character was amazing and fucked up in their own way. Every time I thought I had it figured out something even crazier happened, right up until the last sentence.

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emily_journals's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

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

2.0

The concept of this book really intrigued me. Scooby-Doo with Lovecraftian elements where the monsters might be (and likely are) real? Sign me up!

Except this book was so disappointing in execution. From reading other reviews, I'm so glad I read the audiobook version of this, because the stage direction inserts and made up words weren't as noticeable, so I'll give the narrator mad props for making those things really unnoticeable. I thought the book started off on the right track, but around the halfway point in this book is when I really started noticing all the negatives.

First off, for being set in the 90s (and flashback-esque scenes from the 70s), I personally did not feel much nostalgia around any certain time period. This book could have mostly been reset from the 90s and plopped into modern day (or really, any other time period) with very little change; this is 100% fine, except one of the selling points promised by this book is to be nostalgic for the 90s specifically (which I personally did not find it to be).

Secondly, the ending of this book. Everything that happened in the last ~20% of the book was chaotic, unbelievable, and hard to follow.

People were dying and being resurrected left and right, dogs were getting possessed by demons/angels/random protector beings(still unclear), rituals were being cast, people were living forever; it was all just too much going on and gives the feeling that the author had a bunch of ideas in the draft and didn't edit anything out.

Seriously, so much of the end of this book was just fight scene after fight scene, with little substantial buffer between, which I personally find really boring to read (or listen to) for a significant amount of time, especially when every fight scene is "gang fights creatures, then run, then fight new hoard of same creatures, then run.... repeat".

Lastly, this book has some dangerous discussion of mental health and some questionable representation of queer people. The mental health discussion in this book is unnuanced and the whole introduction scene to the asylum has some problematic descriptions of people with and without mental health issues. The main villain ended up using transness as a device to live forever and be evil, which was super unnecessary. The lesbian character in this book is also very much a caricature of a "typical lesbian" media portrayal.

Overall, I wish I had done more research into this book before picking it up instead of taking the promises given by the author/publisher at face value.

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ocean_the_reader's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

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

5.0

I loved this book so much! The Scooby-Doo aspect was very nostalgic to me and was done so amazingly well. The different mediums used was different but made the story that much more engaging. The twists and turns!! I never saw anything coming at all! It was amazing.

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