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honeyvenom's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Kidnapping, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, and Pregnancy
Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Dementia, Stalking, Abandonment, and Alcohol
Minor: Medical content and Abortion
mothumn's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
ARC REVIEW
They Drown Our Daughters is a story about a curse that is passed down from mother to daughters that fans of Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor may enjoy.
They Drown Our Daughters is a story about a curse that is passed down from mother to daughters that fans of Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor may enjoy.
While reading this I really enjoyed the setting of a foggy, small, east coast fishing town and I thought the concept of a curse that could be a more literal manifestation of the difficult relationship between mothers and their daughters and the experience of women was very interesting. The idea that only the daughters were impacted by this and not the sons felt very familiar in the way that daughters in real life often have to shoulder a lot that sons never will.
Unfortunately though, the story didn’t delve into this idea very deeply which I found disappointing because that was the main thing I found interesting. The focus was more on the characters and the different timelines which for me just didn’t work. I found that all the generations of mothers and daughters felt very similar and therefore had the unfortunate effect of being very repetitive and blended together. None of the women seemed to have any distinct personality to distinguish one from the other and I often would forget which timeline I was reading from because of this. I found it very difficult to continue due to me not being able to care about any of the characters. Not only were they all very similar, but I felt that they were all very flat and did not feel real to me at all, often the dialogue felt forced and robotic.
Despite this, I still was interested to find out the mystery of what was really happening and so I continued on. I found it dragged quite a bit and was extremely slow paced and could definitely do with being cut down a bit. Many of the timelines because the same thing was happening over and over again just got very repetitive and just felt like I was rereading the same thing with only slight variations. I found it slow and there were many parts that didn’t work for me but it was still okay until I got to the climax of the story. This part just came out of nowhere, to me it just felt like a completely different book all of a sudden. There wasn’t really any foreshadowing to explain or anything that made this make any sense. It just didn’t work for me at all, which was really disappointing. I had hoped the ending would bring everything together and make me like it but it just didn’t do that at all.
I can’t say I’d recommend this but if you’re interested in a horror book that is not really scary and more atmospheric then you might enjoy this.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death, Death, Suicide, and Death of parent
Minor: Child abuse, Cursing, Drug use, Mental illness, Sexual content, and War