Reviews tagging 'Infertility'

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

14 reviews

cookie_lover's review against another edition

mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

Very good book, read in 2-3 days. Interesting formatting - story is told via emails and texts. Not quite a 5 star, the formatting lost me a couple of times.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Infidelity, Terminal illness, Medical content, Stalking, and Murder

Moderate: Addiction, Domestic abuse, Infertility, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Grief, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, and War

Minor: Vomit

staceyinthesticks's review against another edition

mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, and Mental illness

Moderate: Addiction, Infertility, Violence, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, War, and Classism

Minor: Animal death, Confinement, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Excrement, and Alcohol

thecozyrogue's review against another edition

challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Toxic friendship, and Classism

Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Infidelity, Violence, and War

Minor: Child death and Infertility

rachel101's review against another edition

challenging funny informative mysterious medium-paced

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

5.0

Don’t be put off by the style of the book, stay with it…. It’s a fabulous read 

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Cancer, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Murder, and Toxic friendship

ashley_turch's review against another edition

challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

Formatting is interesting and fun. It takes a minute to get used to but is a nice change of pace. Makes it fun to annotate and highlight, but I found myself saying often “ok people don’t actually e-mail like that.”

Personally was disappointed in the ending. It didn’t feel realistic to me. Maybe the format didn’t allow me to fully picture the characters being capable of these things —

the murder, that is. I definitely caught the other illegal things happening. 

Would have liked a closer look into Issy’s mental illness issues. Plus why did Martin treat James like such shit? Left with some questions , but maybe that’s the point?

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Infidelity, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Murder, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Suicide, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Infertility, Sexual assault, and Violence

Besides murder, most of the content is not super descriptive due to the nature of the book’s letter format. SA is discussed as something that happened in the past. Not graphic. Someone marked animal death/cruelty for this, but as someone who can never stomach that type of content, it ended up being totally fine. Calling it animal death was a stretch. (Explaining below - no major spoilers but hiding just in case)

The family dog has a foreign body obstruction surgery while being dogsat. The owner says to the sitter that if the surgery is more than $100 to just put the dog down. Messed up, yes, but doesn’t affect anyone. The surgery was paid for by a family member and the dog recovered swimmingly. He wasn’t mentioned again after this and seemed to be a happy boy from there on out.

stepnic's review against another edition

dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Bullying, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Violence, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Classism

Minor: Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Infertility, Infidelity, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, and War

gillianengelbrecht's review against another edition

mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Cancer, Infertility, Infidelity, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, Medical content, and Murder

Minor: Bullying, Miscarriage, Suicide, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, and Toxic friendship

zosiablue's review against another edition

funny mysterious tense fast-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? It's complicated

4.0

SO FUN. I love an epistolary novel, I really do. Super clever & engaging murder mystery told through emails and texts, treated sort of like a game for the reader. Plus, a very accurate depiction of a community theater group. Definitely got overlong and complicated, but the format was like candy. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Infidelity, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Bullying, Child abuse, Mental illness, Murder, and War

Minor: Infertility

atalea's review against another edition

dark mysterious fast-paced

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

2.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Mental illness, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Bullying, Child abuse, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, and Murder

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child death, Domestic abuse, Infertility, Rape, Excrement, Vomit, Pregnancy, and War

calicat42's review against another edition

challenging mysterious slow-paced

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

3.5

The structure was creative—a fun twist on the who dunnit genre.  At the start of the book, there’s no real information about what has happened, so instead of knowing what will happen and watching the characters figure it out, the reader only gets to know as much as the characters. Hard to put a book like that down! 

Although I fell in love with the structure, the content left me wanting a little. There were times where the plot moved quickly because the twists and turns were coming in every line. Yet there were times where I wished I could have read in x2 speed to move things along. I think this just comes to my preferences regarding mysteries; I don’t want to take my foot off the gas once the plot picks up! 

Overall, I enjoyed the read! 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Bullying, Cancer, Chronic illness, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Murder, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, and Abandonment

Moderate: Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Infertility, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Vomit, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: War