Reviews with content warning for Murder - Hawk Mountain

I enjoyed this book, the short chapters make you feel like you’re flying through the book, the amount of tension Habib creates in so many different ways, and watching a character just lose himself. All of it lends itself to be a fast paced and compelling book.

What I liked about the book: the writing was creative throughout, from jumping timelines (and duplicating chapter numbers during these parts) I thought was creative and really do a good job of introducing the main characters. I enjoyed that we got peeks into other people perspectives, not often and not for long periods of time, but they confirm what we may be wondering as this book is mainly told through a 3rd person limited perspective kinda way. So these perspective jumps can are a bit more powerful. I liked the character development, how the main characters are changed because of their circumstances and we see them, sadly, fall apart. A last touch that i added was the amount of foreshadowing or details that come back around, that the things Todd saw or did that upset him are the very things he later does himself as he gets more and more broken down.

My, albeit limited, critiques of the book is that some of the storytelling seemed disjointed. Idk how to explain it more than that. Also, im a little unclear of how the story resolves. Habib does a great job giving a lot of the supporting characters good moments/lines the last time we see them. But we were working towards the hawk mountain book the whole time, and < spoiler > I don’t love the bully was secretly in love the whole time, like this dude’s life was a living hell in his last year of school and is this suppose to be the resolution of the story? Idk not my favorite.< /spoiler >

All around a great debute novel.

Content Warnings

localqueerlibrarian's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-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

4.0

Content Warnings

juliatindell's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

This book was unspeakably sad. Start to finish, just devastating.

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