Reviews tagging 'Cannibalism'

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

3 reviews

rosagruen's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

A southern gothic queer horror story full of folklore & hauntings sounded like the perfect book to transition from summer to autumn & it definitely was.

Honestly I had a hard time getting into the story for about half the book, it took me a while to understand the basics of the story, especially the way the hauntings worked. I also didn’t like how much the characters evolved around car races, which is  just bc I personally cannot connect with that. 
But around half the book the story took me really in & I loved the last 20% of it. 
If the whole book had more focus on the folklore and murder mystery, like the last chapters did, this would have been a a 4-5 stars read for me, but as I said I had a hard time connecting with the first half of the book.
Even though I figured out the mystery pretty early on, I still liked the way it was written and it remained exciting to me. 
I also ended up liking the romance way more than I did. 
So overall a pretty good reading experience but far away from being a favorite. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Suicide, Cannibalism, and Murder

Moderate: Drug abuse and Homophobia

Minor: Racism

valerian_honeybee's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Racism, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Deadnaming, Transphobia, Medical content, Cannibalism, and Fire/Fire injury

jojothefool's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

I had a lot of fun with this audiobook. The supernatural stuff was a bit confusing via audio for me, I think I may have followed some scenes a lot better if I were reading instead of listening, but I got enough of it to get the haunting feelings of the scary scenes. I will say that this book has representation of a queer community I am so not familiar with which was interesting lol there’s a lot of drag racing and not the kind that I’m used to. Car stuff is just not for me, I don’t understand it and I don’t want to, so those parts were kinda hard to get through. I liked the overall mystery and ookiness of the novel. There’s a small yet remarkable romance that I found myself shipping far before I thought the book would do anything with it, so when it happened I was very pleased. Overall a fun time, especially for the toxic codependency queer ship enjoyers. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Self harm, Vomit, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Abandonment

Minor: Cannibalism, Car accident, and Death of parent