Reviews tagging 'Pandemic/Epidemic'

Wranglestone by Darren Charlton

8 reviews

fallen_angel1002's review

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

 What do you do when you realise that your beliefs about the dead are all wrong? And the cute boy you've been crushing on ends up being bitten by a zombie? A cute LGBT+ YA apocalypse setting with themes of betrayal and loss, showing the life of teenager Peter in his life living in the middle of the Wranglestone National Park Lake. It opens with classic themes of the apocalypse, but with his crush getting bitten and kidnapped, Peter must leave the safety of his home town but ends up uncovering more than just who took Cooper. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Alcohol, and Pandemic/Epidemic

kittykaz's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

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

3.0

a solid Story! maybe a little underdeveloped in the plot and character department but the setting was intriguing and the atmospheric writing only added to it

(I'm also a huge fan of snowball the pony, love horse cameos in post-apocalyptic settings)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Blood, and Pandemic/Epidemic

winglesswarrior's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death of parent, Gaslighting, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Child abuse, Child death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Rape, and Sexual assault

markwillnevercry's review

2.0

Not gonna lie, it felt a bit all over the place. In the beginning I was like, "Ah, it is going to be about Peter learning to kill the restless one and thinking about that process, as a deeply emotional person he is", but nah, that was not the problem. I have a feeling, that there were many ideas, that the writer wanted to involve in the story, but either couldn't think through them well enough or simply didn't have enough space in the book. The general strokes of the story are really nice, but there were some places that made it questionable. The short chapters are nice, but I did not understand most of the times why one chapter would end and the other begin, sometimes in the middle of the scene even. It just felt a bit strange. Overall, it was an enjoyable reading experience, I just wish it was better. 

Reading notes:

Why did he throw away the alarm? Shouldn't he keep carrying it to attract the dead?

And the community is just okay with Bud basically killing someone, by making them a bait and not fully informing them?

Now Peter is going to take over Mr Schmidt's job? Where is this story going?

Bro, the sex scene, bring out the fans, bois, it be steamin hot. 

I have a feeling, that the writer of this book is not too fond of capitalism, seeing how Cooper reacts to the idea of wanting to be born before shit hit the fan. (this is never mentioned again, they never again think about being born at some other time)

Did we really need the scene where they kill Essie? Like, there was a bunch of blood already spilled and it does not really make sense to kill her in such a flashy way. 

So we just leave the rest of people and have just Peter, Cooper, Tom and Becky????

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Sexism, Sexual content, and Slavery

axel_p's review

adventurous dark emotional hopeful fast-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

3.0

The beginning kinda sucked, but after that it was amazing.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Cannibalism, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

lilifane's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious sad medium-paced

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

3.0

This was purely a cover buy, which I'm still loving. I wasn't expecting this to be a great book... and it wasn't. The writing is... bad. Really bad. I would describe it as inconsistent and clumsy, same applies for the characters. The plot is all over the place. But I kind of liked it? There were some mysteries and twists I was interested it. And although I liked the characters, I didn't love them. Still, I was rooting for them. Also, the setting and atmosphere are really cool. I liked the national park sceneries, the community on small islands on a lake surrounded by mountains. 
Probably wouldn't recommend it, but I don't regret buying it. It's really pretty. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Trafficking, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

numerous_bees's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

2.0

I try to go easier when reviewing YA books - I'm not the target audience - so I'm not going pick on the themes for being heavy handed or the writing for being clumy or the characters for being and acting like teenagers. Those aren't faults but a quirk of genre, but this novel didn't work for me structurally. 

The first issue I ran into was that the author uses a lot of similes in an attempt to create a voice for the character and I found them be distracting and occasionally inappropriate for the situation.

The second thing - the one that really turned me off - is the sudden slavery/sexual assault plot point that shows up at about the 75% mark, lingers for a couple of chapters, and is dropped and barely brought up again. The sex abuse in particular is completely out of left-field, totally uncalled for, and adds nothing. I'm of the opinion that something that serious needs to justify it's presence in a story, and this didn't. 

The racism metaphor that followed the slavery plot point only served to highlight the lack of racial diversity in the cast. 

Finally, the climax is emotionally hobbled by how little we see of Peter and Cooper's community - the main(?) villain gets an emotional monologue where they try to justify their decisions, but they'vebarely featured in the story to this point and, despite Peter waxing poetic about how many happy memories they had together, we didn't see those events and Peter hadn't thought about them until that point, and I simply didn't care about this character or their motivations. 

It's a shame, because I think that the concept of a queer romance novel set against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse has a lot of potential, but this book isn't really that. It starts off as a romance but ends as a survival adventure, and I don't think it did a good job of transitioning between the two genres. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Racism, Slavery, Xenophobia, Trafficking, Murder, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Animal death, Rape, Sexual assault, Blood, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Child abuse, Physical abuse, Death of parent, and Alcohol

jjjreads's review

dark emotional inspiring fast-paced

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Slavery, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Trafficking, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Sexual harassment