Reviews with content warning for Lesbophobia - Meddling Kids

Reviews tagging 'Lesbophobia'

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

9 reviews

monarchbooks's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious 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

4.0

I don't know what I was expecting going into this book but it was not what I got. Every page shocked me. A bit wordy and heavy on metaphors. Unexpected queer rep.

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courtwj's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

3.25

Interesting premise and mythology but terrible LGBTQIA+ rep and distracting writing style at times.

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preciouslittleingenue's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny reflective tense fast-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

4.5

Oh this was just so FUN!

It's totally not something I'd pick up on my own. The presence of tentacles on the front cover, making it a "monster book" would have immediately put me off it if it wasn't a rec from a friend. And let me tell you, I am so glad they did recommend it.

The start is STRONG and throws you right into it without mincing words. It's almost like you've been thrown a pile of newspaper clippings and have to piece it together as the narrative unfolds and then watch it all fall into place. Loved that. At first this stylistic choice made me feel very removed from the characters, but this didn't last long at all. I was DOWN BAD for Kerri and Andy. Right from the beginning where Andy has that incredible passage personifying Kerri's hair...I knew I would go down with this ship. I, myself, have been head over heels for far too many curly redheaded femmes. Nate was not *unloveable*, but he just didn't shine like the girls did. But that's okay. It's about time the sapphics outshone the men in a novel, especially one written by a man!

The mystery had me guessing! And I wasn't right at first! It definitely ended up being more whacky and goofy than anticipated, but when the book is a direct reference to Scooby Doo and there's a literal Zoinx river...I didn't care too much haha.

So many of Andy's one-liners had me rolling on the floor. I bookmarked them in the audiobook but it returned. Will add later. The group banter was excellent. The METAPHORS had me laughing. The way he described a thought being stopped from coming out of Andy's mouth like a person being stopped by a burly bouncer...WHO COMES UP WITH THAT! It's brilliant and so funny.

The hurt/comfort bed sharing scene???? I WAS ON MY KNEES!

Thoughts on certain aspect of twist ending:

Important to note: Lindsay Ellis has a great video unpacking this topic, but the twist ending DOES contribute to the harmful stereotype that all trans women are just evil men dressed as women, who dress as women for the express purpose of doing said evil. Of course I don't think that was the author's intention, but in the world we live in, we need to at least acknowledge that these tropes can still find their way into media, however innocent and dormant they seem.

Other than that! The twists were GREAT. Only saw them coming like a page ahead of when they actually came. And the VERY LAST ONE AT THE END. I WAS GIGGLING LIKE CRAZY. WHAT A WAY TO END.

I should have known that the SCOOBY DOO BOOK would have a talking dog.

This is what I'm talking about. A level of unhinged I would never usually go for but I'm so glad I did. Amazing. So close to perfect.

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ash_ton's review against another edition

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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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itsheyfay's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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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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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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toffishay's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny 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

3.5

There were parts where the comedy fell flat or it was weirdly slow for how action packed it was, but I was really pulled in to the twists and turns and I love Andy and Kerri :)

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gbrl's review

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adventurous dark funny mysterious fast-paced

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

4.25

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