shaylaeliz's review

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dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.25


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ksuazo94's review

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challenging emotional hopeful informative sad tense medium-paced

3.5


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rmika's review

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dark emotional informative sad fast-paced

5.0


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vigil's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.5

extremely thorough and informative. it’s a great entrance into the world of forensic pathology for people who wish to enter the medical field (like me), or for anyone just plain interested. 

it’s definitely not for the lighthearted, Melinek described her work in visceral detail thar truly conveys exactly what had occurred.

i docked half a point off due to the author’s treatment of suicide. her own father killed himself when she was thirteen, which understandably colored her perception of it. but her low empathy or compassion for the suicidal, ranging from calling them delusional to downright selfish is ugly in a regular person, but willfully ignorant and harmful in a medical professional.

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eatingbrains's review

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challenging dark informative reflective sad fast-paced

3.75

This book makes me wonder about all the medical examiners that have had to deal with determining covid related deaths and how much they've had to endure during the pandemic.  Overall, it was a bit gruesome but I was fascinated.  If you like crime/medical dramas you'd probably enjoy this book.

Also, I'm a total nerd so when they used an SEM to look at the ends of a suture to determine if it was tied off properly I was stoked since I've used them to look at tiny shit.  It's fucking cool!

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inkstainedworld's review

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adventurous emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

4.5


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jourdanicus's review against another edition

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challenging informative fast-paced
A compelling, very human account giving us a window into a couple of years of the author's profession as a medical examiner in Manhattan. Yes, this book can get quite graphic and would not be appropriate for anyone strongly affected by descriptions of death, decay, human anatomy, etc. However, the author approached the topic with great respect and dignity for the people whose bodies she examined after they had died. I also appreciated both that she shared her experience examining the remains of the victims of 9/11 and that she saved it for closer to the end of the book; the book is not meant to be about 9/11 specifically but given that the events of that day likely had such an affect on the author, I can't see how she would have been able to leave that part out.

I agree with other reviews saying the author's perspective on suicide is pretty harshly judgemental, which struck me the wrong way as well, but didn't ruin the rest of the book for me.

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jess_the_reader's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.0

Definitely a dark subject, so make sure you’re in the right headspace for a book about death, including suicide, terrorist attacks, child death, drug use, rape, and graphic descriptions of physical attacks (usually ending in death), and what happens to bodies after death. 
If you’re up for all that, I’d highly recommend this book. I couldn’t put it down, I stayed up till 2AM last night reading this, and was fascinated. 

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