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leanne_miron's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Child death, Racism, Kidnapping, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, Gore, Hate crime, Murder, and Death
Moderate: Confinement, Adult/minor relationship, Grief, and Police brutality
Minor: Homophobia and Lesbophobia
talonsontypewriters's review
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.
Graphic: Violence, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual assault, Murder, Racism, and Misogyny
Moderate: Gun violence, Alcohol, Racial slurs, Police brutality, Sexual harassment, Kidnapping, Confinement, and Pedophilia
Minor: Sexual content, Vomit, Child abuse, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Domestic abuse
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.amandas_bookshelf's review against another edition
- 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
2.0
Graphic: Alcohol, Blood, Confinement, Death, Gun violence, Misogyny, Police brutality, Racial slurs, and Racism
Moderate: Death of parent
jellie23's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Kidnapping and Racism
Minor: Alcohol, Confinement, Death, Stalking, Racial slurs, and Murder