Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Black Mouth

Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

maziodynes's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense 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? Yes

4.0

I enjoyed this book more than I thought initially! it's not as scary as I expected, more unsettling, and I liked the overarching theme of breaking cycles of abuse and how they can manifest. I also loved how flawed and, well, messy the cast of characters was. they felt incredibly real.

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ohyayitsapril's review

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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jla's review

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adventurous dark mysterious sad 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

3.75

The first 80% of the book was eerie and suspenseful, but the resolution felt like it petered out.

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alexandragriffin's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad medium-paced

3.5

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faulklore's review

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dark slow-paced

Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.0

trigger

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bookbelle5_17's review

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.75

Review of Black Mouth

By: Ronald Malfi

When Jamie Warren was thirteen, he, his brother Dennis, and two best friends Mia and Clay encounter a mysterious known as the Magician. He teaches them magic tricks, tells them they can learn magic, but asks them to do terrible things such as sacrifice Dennis. As an adult, Jamie is haunted by those memories becoming an alcoholic like his abusive father, but now he is being called home to Black Mouth. The Magician has returned, and Jamie, Dennis, Mia, and Clay intend to stop him before he poisons any more children.

This dark and creepy story has supernatural undertones as you don’t know if the Magician is an immortal or if the character’s minds are playing tricks on them. Jamie like a lot of unreliable narrators in thrillers is an alcoholic so you find yourself not sure if he is haunted by metaphorical ghosts or literal ghosts. This adds to creepy and unsettledness to the plot as its hard to determine what’s real and what isn’t. Jamie as a main character is sympathetic with his addiction, his fears about the magician, and his complicated emotions towards Dennis. He loves Dennis but finds it challenging to take of his brother. The other two characters Mia and Clay are interesting too. Clay was born with a disfigurement known as Vitiligo, meaning he lacked pigmentation on certain parts of his skin, and he would get bullied mercilessly. As an adult he deals with it a lot better and helps kids with issues like his. Mia on the other hand, lost her parents in a car accident and had become obsessed with death, eventually making horror movies as adult. They deal with what happened in their own way. Clay wanting to make sure they protect others like them, Mia wants revenge, and Jamie wants to run taking care of his brother with him. It reflects how they each cope with trauma; Clay uses it to make him stronger, Mia is full of anger fueling her, and Jamie avoids. There is foul language and one character whose head I hated being inside. He has ugly thoughts that bothered me. The story is good with themes of friendship and the darkness within all of us.

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kermit_the_wrong's review

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense slow-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? Yes

5.0

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sssmoser's review

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dark slow-paced

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

3.0

𝐏𝐥𝐨𝐭: Jamie Warren has been avoiding his hometown for years, after dealing with a lot of childhood abuse and trauma and suffering through years of alcoholism. The death of his mother and need to care for his brother, bring him back to Black Mouth on a collision course with ghosts of his past. Joining him are two former friends who come together to finally deal with their past demons, both literally and figuratively.
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫: Ronald Malfi
𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬: 436
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: Horror
𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝:... Eh 🤷‍♀️
𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐝𝐞𝐥 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭: Yes, but by the thinnest of hairs
𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐝: Contemporary
𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐲 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠:👻👻
𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰: ⭐⭐⭐
This is the fourth or fifth book I've read by Malfi, and I'm a big fan. Unfortunately this is my least favorite of his, as I never felt it got off the ground and went somewhere.

The book had a very similar vibe to two of my favorite Stephen King novels - It and Revival, but sadly the plot faltered. Jaimie is the main character and protagonist, but I found him to be the least interesting of the main four.

The friends are brought together after one of them witnesses a mysterious magician who had preyed on them as children, but besides them trying to solve that mystery, I felt like the book just kept adding more and more childhood trauma on these characters, with very little moving the plot along. Somewhere in the middle, an additional villain is added, and it just didn't work for me.

Despite it not living up to expectations and having quite a few pacing problems, there are still moments of lovely writing in here and I did really enjoy about half of it.

⭐⭐⭐

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