Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia

7 reviews

avisreadsandreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-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? No

2.0

Sadly, this book doesn't work: the writing is clunky, the main character never felt authentic to me, the setup (of her working with the cops) doesn't make any sense, and many of the things she does don't either (she's also constantly getting drunk and hardly sleeps, so maybe her terrible judgement is not that surprising). But the worse part is that we're told who the killer is in the middle of the book and everything that happens after that makes even less sense...

Other reviewers claim the killer was foreshadowed early in the book, but I thought the reveal came out of nowhere.

And then the ending is such a letdown. Ugh. I really wanted to like this book so much, but really I should have DNFed it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Racism, Sexual assault, Blood, Grief, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Death of parent, and Lesbophobia

Minor: Infidelity and Stalking

adiajamille's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

After so much build up, the ending felt abrupt. But overall it was an intriguing story. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Racism, Police brutality, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

heather667's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Lesbophobia, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Rape and Torture

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Fire/Fire injury, Cultural appropriation, and War

zoepagereader's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

3.0

I had high hopes for this going in, how could I not when it’s a historical fiction mystery set New York during the Harlem Renaissance? But unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. I did not fully under any of the characters and felt that all of them had only been written at the surface of their stories. I still don’t really understand the motive for murder and still think it should have been someone else. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Murder, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Body horror

mcdal's review against another edition

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Kidnapping, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Homophobia, Sexism, Blood, Police brutality, Stalking, and Injury/Injury detail

venetiana's review against another edition

challenging mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.25

Great atmosphere and setup, loved the characters. Unfortunately very slow, and somewhat repetitive.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Blood, Murder, and Alcohol

Moderate: Hate crime and Racial slurs

Minor: Gun violence, Homophobia, Misogyny, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Lesbophobia, and Injury/Injury detail

talonsontypewriters's review

I tried to eke it out because I hate DNF'ing things, but if it's still this difficult to trudge through very short chapters over halfway through it's probably just going to get worse. I hate to say anything that implies debut = poor quality, because that's just not true in so many cases (and subjective anyway), but unfortunately it does apply here, at least for me.

The writing is painfully dull -- very choppy and simplistic, walls of stilted dialogue with no differentiating character voices, all telling and no showing, so much repetition and so many epithets -- and the plot isn't interesting enough to make up for it. A sense of suspense is almost nonexistent; any foreshadowing is too frequent and heavyhanded to be effective. I do feel some level of intrigue, but mostly just to confirm my suspicions, and it's not enough to get me to power through to see. Subplots are present in abundance and go unresolved and unacknowledged for chapters at a time, with awkward pacing and scene/chapter transitions.

All that alone makes anything hard to invest in, but I also can't get a sense of really any of the characters: Everything about them is told and not shown, and none of them really stand out. There are a lot of side characters, and I had trouble remembering who some of them were. Even the setting falls flat -- without some slang and a few technology notes, it would be indistinguishable from the present day, which is really disappointing because 1920s Harlem has so much to work with... and it just is not there.

Dead Dead Girls has so much potential, but sadly it's not followed up on as it could be. Maybe I'll be able to return to it in a more patient mood, but for now it's a hard pass.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Racism, Sexual assault, Violence, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Confinement, Gun violence, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Sexual content, Vomit, and Lesbophobia

Smoking, including underage. Descriptions of dead bodies. Broken arranged marriage between a 16- and 22-year-old, no actual romance (at least at this point); references to sexual dynamics between teenage girls and adult men. Attempted rape/sexual assault shown, others implied -- scene where police discuss assaulting a Black woman in custody.