Reviews with content warning for Forced institutionalization - Graveyard of Lost Children

Reviews tagging 'Forced institutionalization'

Graveyard of Lost Children by Katrina Monroe

5 reviews

wordswritinstarlight's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

Look this book is fine. The writing is beautiful, it's an extremely thoughtful and emotive exploration of mental illness and parenthood and generational trauma. The suspense works, Olivia is a solid main character and Shannon is sympathetic even at her worst, this book achieves exactly what it meant to. I think it drags a little in the middle--chunks of Olivia's story definitely feel like they're being extended in order to continue spacing out Shannon's story "correctly"--but not so much that I had trouble keeping up the momentum of the book. It's fine. I would recommend this book to people who like horror novels like this.

Look. I just don't like horror novels that are thoughtful explorations of mental illness through

straight up mental illness, possibly because I go to enough therapy in my day to day life that those bore me and possibly because I have enough psychology training/emergency medical training that I find them predictable. This book is textbook postpartum depression/postpartum psychosis, actually this book is a great guide to things to look out for in your loved ones, but I was kind of hoping for an exploration of those things through a supernatural lens and I was steadily more frustrated as things shook out firmly mundane. I grasp that the suspense is about whether or not the supernatural aspects are real or a delusion, and this book does a great job with it, but I just truly find realistic fiction so boring.</spoilers> I probably should have cut my losses as soon as it was clear this book was not going to include any Ring shit. This is a failure of my own internal filtering in my library catalog and not the book itself, but here we are.

Content Warnings

siobhanward's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

This book had a lot of potential and while there were some moments that were solidly creepy, it felt like things were repetitive to the point of getting boring. I think if this book had been a short story it would have been a lot more effective. As it was, it felt like Monroe wasn't quite sure what she was doing with the story, which made the characters and plot feel a bit underdeveloped for a novel. That being said, the premise was solid and I'd love to read more from Monroe in the future.

Content Warnings