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Reviews tagging 'Animal death'
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
34 reviews
guinness74's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Charming and enjoyable. Just what I needed in my timeline of books. It’s not what you would expect, which made it even more enjoyable.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Xenophobia, Blood, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Child death, Mental illness, and Alcohol
uselesspirateraven's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, Mental illness, and Murder
Moderate: Body horror and Blood
Minor: Antisemitism
drewanslee's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Murder, and War
Moderate: Animal cruelty and Animal death
Minor: Blood
oceanwriter's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
This series has caught my eye for a while, especially when the movie came out. I’ve been hesitant to pick it up because I’m not typically one for the horror genre. I joined a buddy read which gave me the push I needed to read it.
Jacob grew up listening to his grandfather’s stories of the peculiar children he knew growing up. As he got older, he discredited his tales as fiction. Never could he have imagined one of those stories coming to fruition and taking his grandfather’s life. No one believes his own story now, thinking him traumatized and mentally unwell.
Jacob believes the answer to his nightmares lies in his grandfather’s stories. He convinces his parents to allow him to take a trip to England where his grandfather lived during World War II. There, he ends up finding the portal into the past.
I was surprised by how absorbed I got into the book. Yet, whenever I put it down, I didn’t find myself thinking about it. My interest was mostly in the beginning, however. By the end, I was weirded out by the relationship between Jacob and Emma’s relationship. While I could anticipate the book ending on a cliffhanger given there are other books that follow, I was a little annoyed as I don’t feel invested enough to jump immediately into book two.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, and Blood
Moderate: Gun violence, Antisemitism, and War
Minor: Ableism, Child death, and Mental illness
gnpunpun's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Nostalgic
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Blood, and Murder
beasbookburrowxo's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death
edmund_pearce's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- 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: Animal death, Mental illness, and Dementia
Moderate: Genocide and War
moody_gobling's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
One last read for 2023. I found this book easily digestible, light on horror, big on magical realism. I’m glad I was able to read this book, as it seemed to have been quite popular at its release, but nothing jumped out at me as “remarkable”. The reveal of the main big bad at the end was nice, if not subdued. The MC is just shy of having “chosen one” syndrome. The characters had a charm to them that I think TJ Clune has done better in later works. If you are a fan of lost-boys, time travel, WW2 and teenage boys not feeling heard, this one is for you.
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal death, Death, Mental illness, Blood, Stalking, and War
micaelamariem's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
I’m not really sure why, but this book really didn’t grab my attention. The premise was good but I think the writing fell flat. While using the pictures was a great way to do something different, it was a stretch and felt too forced sometimes.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Confinement, Death, Violence, Grief, Abandonment, Alcohol, and War
erebus53's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
I tried to pick up a copy of this one as a graphic novel, as it was listed as on the shelves (at Christchurch South Library), but an unhelpful librarian refuse to help me track it down after I had flipped through everything on the shelves and come up wanting.. so I threw up my arms in agitation and just downloaded the audiobook. It was probably a wise decision in the long run.
The story focuses on a teen who is brought up in Florida and who has a close relationship with his Jewish grandfather who survived WWII. The man tells him fanciful stories and and shows him photographs of a children's home where he was raised with kids with special powers. The photographs look fake and a bit dodgy, so nobody believes his stories of special powers and monsters, assuming that they are the mentally divergent accommodations of a traumatised holocaust survivor. As the old man gets increasingly paranoid and the family are considering putting him in a care facility, his grandson goes to check on him, only to find that one of the monsters has got him.
Once his therapist okays the trip, he follows a set of clues in his grandfather's last words, and he travels with his father to a remote island in the UK where his father wishes to observe the local birdlife. There he puts together a puzzle that brings him into contact with people his grandfather once knew, and entangles him in further adventure.
Being set in Florida I notice that there is quite a bit of narrative about the treatment of the elderly. There is a focus on listening to the opinions of older people, and the ways that they are treated in society (there are a lot of rest homes and retirees in Florida, so this follows). I also encountered the term "lenai" for the first time. Intuiting that it was a type of verandah, I looked it up and realised that this common feature of houses in tropical climes was not unknown to me.. my Uncle has one similar to the pictures that I see in an internet web-search, and he lives in Australia.
The story is interesting, deals with alternate timelines and portals, and has a little bit of teen kissing, secret monsters, shape changers, levitating and snorkelling, and some stuff with common or garden necromancy, scary monsters, and sheep poo. This is the first part of a bigger story so it's not surprising that the end of it is a bit of a cliffhanger. I'd like to know what happens next.
The story focuses on a teen who is brought up in Florida and who has a close relationship with his Jewish grandfather who survived WWII. The man tells him fanciful stories and and shows him photographs of a children's home where he was raised with kids with special powers. The photographs look fake and a bit dodgy, so nobody believes his stories of special powers and monsters, assuming that they are the mentally divergent accommodations of a traumatised holocaust survivor. As the old man gets increasingly paranoid and the family are considering putting him in a care facility, his grandson goes to check on him, only to find that one of the monsters has got him.
Once his therapist okays the trip, he follows a set of clues in his grandfather's last words, and he travels with his father to a remote island in the UK where his father wishes to observe the local birdlife. There he puts together a puzzle that brings him into contact with people his grandfather once knew, and entangles him in further adventure.
Being set in Florida I notice that there is quite a bit of narrative about the treatment of the elderly. There is a focus on listening to the opinions of older people, and the ways that they are treated in society (there are a lot of rest homes and retirees in Florida, so this follows). I also encountered the term "lenai" for the first time. Intuiting that it was a type of verandah, I looked it up and realised that this common feature of houses in tropical climes was not unknown to me.. my Uncle has one similar to the pictures that I see in an internet web-search, and he lives in Australia.
The story is interesting, deals with alternate timelines and portals, and has a little bit of teen kissing, secret monsters, shape changers, levitating and snorkelling, and some stuff with common or garden necromancy, scary monsters, and sheep poo. This is the first part of a bigger story so it's not surprising that the end of it is a bit of a cliffhanger. I'd like to know what happens next.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Death, Gun violence, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and War
Moderate: Genocide, Gore, Excrement, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Kidnapping