Reviews with content warning for Child death - The Haunting of Alejandra

Reviews tagging 'Child death'

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

37 reviews

melreadsandrecs's review against another edition

1.0

I'm sorry, but this was subjectively, to me, a really bad book. I found out not only poorly written but problematic. This review will be fairly brief but will contain spoilers.

Firstly, the characterization was very weak. Every character sounded and acted the exact same. The POV would change and I wouldn't even notice, since threw characters were just copied and pasted.

More importantly, the plot was extremely weak. Alejandra faces challenges, kind of. But every obstacle is unrealistically easy to solve. She finds her birth parents with ease, despite having been in a closed adoption. She finds and can afford a therapist within a matter of minutes, and of course the therapist has no wait list or screening needs. Of course her husband magically agrees to a very easy divorce despite everything we've been told about him being competitive and callous. Of course her therapist knows a soil analyst (which didn't even really make sense) Of course she gets released from the hospital after a suicide attempt with no issue, even though in real life a hospitalization like that costs thousands and usually ruins your life.

Which brings me to what I thought was problematic about the book: it absolutely failed at depicting the tenacity required to actually overcome post partum depression and the difficulties of motherhood. If everybody could just get into therapy within an hour, we wouldn't be losing mothers and children to suicide and infanticide the way we are. If therapists could do random house calls at the drop of a hat, we might not have police killings of people in mental health crises. And it is irresponsible to write a plot a suicide attempt be the solution to any problem.

Yeah the more I write, the less sorry I am for the low rating. Truly what the hell did I just read.

Content Warnings

bookiesncreme's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

gotbookcitement's review against another edition

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dark emotional slow-paced

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

3.0

This took me so long to read for being such a short book. I didn't really like it. It was a very depressing story about a woman who feels trapped in her marriage and by her children. Her maternal bloodline has a generational curse that makes them want to harm themselves and their children. There are triggers for suicide, depression, and postpartum depression.
The majority of this book was just inner monologue, which became boring pretty quickly.
Then it became a little self-helpy with her going to therapy.
The horror angle was interesting, but there wasn't enough of it. The encounters were so brief. I do think this author can write good horror, because the way the demon was described was disturbing!
Alejandra bored me as a character. She did have growth, but I just wasn't interested.
I also feel a little misled by the La Llorona angle.
I struggled with this. It was just very dull. I wanted more action instead of talking through everything.
Getting other characters in history POV's was interesting, but they were all miserable and depressed too.
It just wasn't for me.

Content Warnings