Reviews tagging 'Ableism'

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

13 reviews

fkshg8465's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I know this book is considered horror, but I think it’s more accurate to call it psychological. Reminds me of how I felt watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Ted is a character for whom I’ll have infinite compassion. Dee, less so, but she too could benefit from kindness and therapy. I feel so deeply and heavily sorry for Ted. This may be the best fictional work I’ve read on DID. It’s a rare disorder but one that those who suffer from it could be greatly helped if we had more books about it, both fictional and scientific.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Stalking, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

melliedm's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Blood, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Body shaming, Child death, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Vomit, and Abandonment

hotdrinks's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Really vivid atmosphere! I cared a lot about the characters.

Kind of exposition heavy at the end. I usually really hate exposition and clean endings where most everything is answered, but honestly I just really loved Ted from the beginning, so it was nice seeing them get a happy ending. It's also very refreshing to see DID used in a mystery and not end up being the source of the horror. Even though there is a happy ending, there's still a good bit of tragedy with Dee's story. Over all I really liked it!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Medical content, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Ableism, Cursing, Death, Blood, and Murder

cady_sass's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

This is the first time ever that I’ve read a LOT of other reviews before deciding on my final feelings. I went into this blind, because that seemed to be the recommendation and also my preference with most books anyways. I was expecting horror/thriller/possibly speculative fiction? And I don’t think it’s any of those, which perhaps leads to me feeling a little disappointed. If I had to assign a genre I guess would call it psychological mystery. It’s a very slow build, and there are very few horror or thriller elements here. I guessed the “big twist” about 3 chapters in, but the final reveal I did not expect. 

After reading more reviews from people i follow, it seems like it is widely agreed that going in blind was definitely best, and i agree, and that most of the 5 star reviews I see are upon SECOND read. Which makes a lot of sense. I would probably give this 3.75… it is REALLY hard to talk about this without spoilers. Up until the last few chapters, I had some serious qualms with the representation here and how it could be damaging. I fear that because of the way it’s written, this could be triggering and people would not understand the full story or even finish it, so even though I can retract my claws (pun intended) I think the damage can still be done. I will attempt a second read at some point and see if my feelings change. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

emwgrace's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

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

2.5

Trigger/Content Warning for the novel: Extremely Graphic Depictions of Child Abuse

Overhyped and ultimately disappointing. 

I’ve been meaning to read more mystery/thrillers, so I was excited to start this one. At the beginning, I was truly intrigued by both the missing girl case and the main character, Ted, and of course, any book that features a cat will get a special Cat Bonus Star from me. But around the halfway point, something about this made it so slow to get through, and instead of being the page-turner it should have been, I found myself more often just setting it down. This novel also made me uncomfortable (not in a good way) with how it handled certain topics, and because of that, any positive experiences I had while reading have been tainted. 

**Spoilers for the rest of the review**

Nothing ruins a book faster for me than using mental disorders as plot twists. It’s cheap and in almost all cases, poorly done. Yes, I read the author’s Afterword about the research she did and her intentions to destigmatize how DID is treated in media. But after finishing it, I can’t help but feel that the way this condition was handled in this book fed exactly into that stigma. While it was obvious for anyone who’s somewhat familiar with the genre to tell quite early on that Ted was not the culprit—that would have been too easy—the story still points all of its fingers at him from the beginning and spends more than 80% of the narrative treating him like an abusive monster who kidnapped a girl and locks her in a freezer. Revealing at the end of a novel, marketed as horror, that the character who’s been villainized by other characters and treated as an outcast to be feared for nearly the entire book has DID from abuse he experienced as a child, in my opinion, is not revolutionary. You can’t subvert the way mental illness is depicted in fiction if you spend almost 300 pages reproducing the same harmful portrayals you’re trying to subvert.

I know not everyone will agree, but I also know I’m not alone in my views.

In the end, the book wasn't scary, it was just sad and made me feel kinda gross. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, and Child death

Moderate: Ableism, Animal death, Mental illness, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Kidnapping, Stalking, and Murder

yomireads's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

This was a... weird read. By the end I was won over and would read this again, but I've never been a big fan of feeling confused as a means of misdirect. I did really enjoy the unreliable narrator aspects of the story, and was shocked by the plot twist in relation to

Dee

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse

Moderate: Ableism and Animal death

Minor: Child death

aardwyrm's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

3.0

It's fun to read, and the genre is full of works that are great atmosphere 90% of the way through and then don't stick the landing. If you just want spooky eeriness, it's not a bad choice. It's just ultimately got nothing it's actually about. The setup seems to promise a situation where lots of cliche genre stuff seems to be true, and then the big twist is all the cliche stuff is in fact true, just obfuscated. It's definitely going for twisty and intricate, but a twist and just changing the story partway through aren't really the same thing. Exactly the sort of book I think ought to have a warning sticker you can optionally peek under so you can know before you get invested if the supernatural is just a bad metaphor. When the big reveal is nothing interesting has really happened, then it's hard to care about what comes before. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

kbergsten's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Medical content, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail

libraryofdoe's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

How to talk about this book without spoilers? What I can say is it’s absolutely fantastic, harrowing and packs a heavy punch.

The premise is that a woman moves to a street where the man who she believes abducted her younger sister 11 years ago lives. The novel is both about that and absolutely not about that (I know, frustrating when you’re trying to decide whether to read it). I definitely advise reading the trigger warnings and going in somewhat prepared. If you like mental health rep, unreliable narrators and horror that makes you think, this is for you.

I need to reread this ASAP, knowing what was going on, so that I can pick out the inner and outer world parts. I will also be looking for reviews from people with DID to see how well the novel portrays it, as while I have a trauma-based dissociative disorder and have engaged previously with a lot of the content listed in the bibliography, I don’t have any form of DID and I therefore can’t speak on the representation. To me, it was fantastic and so, so sad. Amazing to see a novel use characters with these disorders and not have them be a villain. I feel this book really encourages the reader to question their worldview and view on mental health, and the afterword has me sobbing even now.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Homophobia

eels's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

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

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Child abuse, and Child death