Reviews tagging 'Child death'

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

38 reviews

athnyx230's review against another edition

reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Domestic abuse, Toxic relationship, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Child death, Death of parent, War, and Blood

Minor: Miscarriage

thenextbookdilemma's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Where do I even start with this book?

First it stretches your mind, as I think is always the case when parallel universes are explored. This idea challenges our very existences and always throws me for a loop

I, like many of you (probably…maybe?) have considered on multiple occasions the question of, how might my life have been different if X had gone differently, or if I hadn’t met Y, or if Z had happened ? Well, Cara knows the answer to that question in 372 different worlds. 

A very brief summary: This book is about multiverse travel. A woman has died on 372 different parallel universes and thus is able to visit them and gather data for her home earth. But soon she discovers that she is involved in something far more nefarious than expected. 

I LOVED this book. The characters and all their iterations were so interesting and human. The worlds were well-developed and captivating. There were multiple plot twists and a romance subplot that I adored. The writing was beautiful and impressive especially for a debut!

But this book also makes you think about who you are, and who you could have been. 

Would I be the same person if my circumstances had been different? Johnson says no, and I agree. We are not our circumstances, but we are not unaffected by them. Who might you become if your means of survival are not provided to you? How can we judge somebody who has to fight to survive, who lacks the same amount of security as we do? Who doesn’t know where their next meal or a roof over their head is coming from? It’s a reminder that the family you are born into, the class, the race, the place, is all just luck. And that very truth can be humbling or infuriating or devastating. I loved the way Johnson wove these questions of equity and classism into a gorgeous multiverse novel and I will long think about all the Emmas I could have been or perhaps, all the different Emmas I am parallel to this one. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Classism, Gore, Physical abuse, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Racism

Minor: Child death, Suicide, Addiction, Child abuse, and Lesbophobia

katequiet's review

adventurous dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

Why didn't I read this sooner??? 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Death of parent, Violence, Toxic relationship, Abandonment, Suicide, Domestic abuse, Suicidal thoughts, War, Child abuse, and Classism

marioosa517's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Violence, Domestic abuse, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Xenophobia, Classism, Blood, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Medical content, Fire/Fire injury, Body horror, Child death, Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, Grief, War, and Gun violence

Minor: Sexual content, Sexual violence, Vomit, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, and Cursing

leannanecdote's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Drug use, Gaslighting, Infidelity, Rape, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, War, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Classism, Colonisation, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Sexual assault, Torture, Toxic relationship, Death, Abandonment, Blood, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Murder, Racism, Self harm, Xenophobia, and Violence

Moderate: Alcohol, Animal death, Trafficking, and Vomit

emily_mh's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This was SO GOOD. So many people have loved this book and I really hoped I could be one of them, and I am! It has such such a great combination of plot, character, and theme, and the writing style was great: it was filled with some wry observations that either make you see things in a new light or perfectly put into words how you might already think about something. 

The story was gripping right from the off. It’s the kind of plot where you don’t really know where things are going to go, but not at all in a bad way. There are intriguing twists and some great pacing. I will say that the ending felt a little rushed, though. 

I really liked the MC Cara, who embodied the reluctant hero trope. She goes through ethical dilemmas throughout the book, torn between self-preservation and her moral compass. It was interesting seeing her perspective on these dilemmas, seeing the thought process behind her actions. Moreover, in Cara (and other characters) we see a key theme played out: how different circumstances (as seen on alternate Earths) can lead someone to become a different person. Cara gets to observe how one event happening, or not happening, could have impacted her character. And through this Cara questions if the opposite cannot also be true, that is, if different circumstances can have no impact on a person’s development, because there are people and situations we will always be drawn to due to our nature. This was really fascinating to think about. 

Another great theme was this idea of “the space between worlds”, an idea that crops up in so many places within the novel. For example, it is a physical liminal space when Cara is traversing, but it is also the space which Cara occupies as an Ashtown-born person working in Wiley City. The theme embodies how Cara feels more at home in the space between worlds than she does on said worlds themselves. 

I also thought the romance was a great touch. I loved the mutual pining and how oblivious Cara was with the whole thing. I do wish I had gotten more of an idea as to why Cara and Dell were attracted to one another; we are shown that they are, but I wanted to know the why. 

Overall this was a fantastic read and I’m excited for the potential companion novel! 

Rep: Black sapphic MC, Japanese-American sapphic LI, Ivorian-American SC 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, and Murder

Moderate: Death of parent, Gore, Racism, Drug abuse, Body horror, Drug use, and Addiction

Minor: War, Child abuse, Sexual content, Colonisation, Suicide, Gun violence, Religious bigotry, Body shaming, Medical content, Miscarriage, Vomit, Ableism, Pedophilia, Emotional abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Homophobia, Transphobia, Terminal illness, Rape, Fire/Fire injury, and Blood

Minor: nuclear warfare, volcano

oriana095's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious sad 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Murder, Violence, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Physical abuse and Toxic relationship

Minor: Drug abuse, Addiction, and Child death

traa's review against another edition

adventurous challenging sad tense fast-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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Death, Violence, War, Physical abuse, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Classism, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Blood, Child death, Abandonment, Child abuse, Suicide, Adult/minor relationship, and Death of parent

Minor: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Vomit

gameoftomes's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I absolutely loved this book. It’s a stellar scifi novel about the multiverse and about identity. How different circumstances change the choices we might make and how to know someone to their core in spite of their multiversal selves. 

Cara is really smart, you get to see her thought process. It never feels like the author is just telling when she’s doing this. It’s so interesting to be in Cara’s head, her decisions always make sense with her character. Cara is wayyyy to hard on herself throughout the book though, but it checks out with her past that includes the death of her parents, a toxic and abusive relationship, and the horrible conditions of the place she grew up in. 

Great plot twists throughout the book. 3 big ones in the first 100 pages. The plot twists are spaced well, with foreshadowing and good writing that makes the twists make perfect sense within the story. 

Fully fledged science fiction world, never feels like info-dumping, it feels like discovery the way Micaiah Johnson writes it. I loved being absorbed into the world. 

I thought this was YA based on the cover, but it’s adult science fiction even though there is no gratuitous descriptions of violence and no explicit sex scenes. The protagonist is 26 and the plot is more complex then typical YA scifi, which tends to focus more on character and/or world building than plot. 

10/10 for me. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Domestic abuse and Toxic relationship

Minor: Cultural appropriation, Deportation, Grief, Miscarriage, Religious bigotry, Child death, Violence, Biphobia, Death of parent, Death, and Classism

immovabletype's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Gore, Body horror, Classism, Domestic abuse, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Murder, Child abuse, and Violence

Moderate: Child death, Chronic illness, Death of parent, and Deportation

Minor: Drug abuse, War, Sexual content, and Medical content