Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

15 reviews

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 —

Spoiler

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?

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Medical trauma, Suicide, 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)

Spoiler

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.

motypeandroid's review against another edition

mysterious medium-paced

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

4.25

I really enjoyed this book. It’s probably the most fun I’ve had reading a book this year. It was so messy with lies and fraud and crazy people that I forgot there was going to be a murder. I really enjoyed the format this book was told in. I’d consider reading from this author again. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Violence and Addiction

Minor: Rape

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer

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

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

kshertz's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.5

This is a great read! It kept me reading, I was very intrigued. I couldn’t wait to see how it all unfolded. I couldn’t guess who it was and don’t think it’s guessable. There’s a ton of twists and turns. The only reason it’s not a 5 star rating is because it started to feel like twists for no reason and over the top at one point. The ending didn’t totally feel like the vindication I was going for. But still super satisfying and intriguing and I couldn’t put it down. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Infidelity, Murder, Physical abuse, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Child abuse, Death, and Violence

librarianlirael's review

dark mysterious fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Violence, and Stalking

Moderate: Sexual assault

Minor: Terminal illness, Toxic friendship, Murder, Medical content, Infidelity, Forced institutionalization, Excrement, Addiction, and Cancer

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! 

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Content Warnings

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

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

Minor: War

sophcart_'s review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer

Minor: Violence

christygsp's review against another edition

4.5

Honestly, this book was a dark horse for me! I didn’t expect to make it past 40 pages but I was in from start to finish. 
The layout of reading correspondence and other documents was done very well, and I kept want to read just one more email. Though I will say that while I was waiting for an actual murder to happen, I did get a bit impatient. 
The way this mystery was unravelled was clever, intriguing and kept my brain working all through. When I had a theory, something new came up and shook it. At the end I was half right and half wrong, which led to a great mic drop reveal!  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Violence, Death, and Bullying

tpasta's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Stalking, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Rape, Violence, and War

isabellalinares's review against another edition

dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

It was such a fun read and the format was exciting. A great change of pace. Loved taking notes while reading to try and figure it all out. 

I've already recommended it to so many people. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infertility, Violence, Terminal illness, Suicide, Death, Pregnancy, Chronic illness, Cancer, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Murder, Rape, and Toxic friendship