Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

Hell Is a World Without You by Jason Kirk

10 reviews

jodyrae's review

funny lighthearted 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? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Self harm, Transphobia, Xenophobia, Mass/school shootings, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, and Gaslighting

This is a humorous novel about evangelical church youth groups in the early oughta, with tons of references to church culture and Bible camps, as the protagonist wrestles with Scripture and interpretation of the Bible and his own faith.

emulator's review

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring 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? It's complicated

5.0

Reading this book was a breathtaking experience in so many ways. Despite my not being raised Evangelical, I have never before found something that so authentically captures identity crises, living with doubt and shame that takes years to unravel. The layers of self-loathing and self-hatred caused by disconnects deep in the soul between the teachings our social structures reinforce and what we spiritually know to be innately true. How doubt and shame bury these feelings deep enough to gnaw at our sense of self and capacity to love. How we repress it all and suffocate in increasingly desperate attempts to Be Normal.

There are also the approximately 3,705 times I laughed my head off and the representation I felt as a former Scripture And Liturgy Dork. Beautiful, powerful, overwhelming and authentic novel on every level, one which I have already re-read and then listened to the audiobook start-to-finish. I will hold this book close to my heart for as long as I live.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Cursing, Gun violence, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Religious bigotry, and Alcohol

Moderate: Addiction, Drug use, Homophobia, Racism, Islamophobia, Grief, Car accident, and Death of parent

Minor: Mental illness and Antisemitism

stephe's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.5

 “I’m sick of believing God loves us in a way that’s basically hate.” 

 

One of the prayers I’ve prayed most in my life has been, “Please don’t be as cruel as people say You are.” Most of my high school life was spent believing that I was almost certainly going to hell. The parts where I didn’t feel completely consumed by that all the time were spent believing that most of the people I really cared about (not to mention those I didn’t) were also going to hell. It’s a horrible way to live. HIAWWY really gets what it’s like to have that be the all-consuming message running through your mind—all in between wacky youth group games, ever-changing crushes, and all the frustrations of just being a youth. 

 

Also, this book is hilarious. I was a little worried it might be to painful a read, but it made me laugh sooooo much. 

 

This book feels like it was written for the insiders. By that I mean, I imagine it probably feels inaccessible, if not outright ridiculous to anyone who didn’t grow up in this world. What amazed me, though, was that none of this seemed farcical or parodical. With a couple major exceptions, just about everything that is said or done in this book are things I’ve witnessed (or at least experience secondhand through other youth group kids). 

 

I adored this book. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I felt healed a little reading it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Misogyny, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Gun violence and Death of parent

Minor: Car accident

jdianm's review against another edition

dark funny fast-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Cursing, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Islamophobia, Grief, Death of parent, Outing, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Xenophobia, Antisemitism, and Car accident

lbatch's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective fast-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? It's complicated

4.25

Hoo boy! This is a hard one to rate. It's excellent, an absolute gut punch, but also very difficult to recommend to anyone who strays too far from its target audience, which is basically exvangelical adults who were in jr high or high school (esp who were southern baptist teenaged boys) in the early 2000s. The voice on this evolves so well as the first-person narrator grows from a freshman to an adult, but that also means that if you're not 100% in on the slightly satirical in-group language use, you're going to be very much in cringe mode for at least the first 8 chapters and likely think the author just doesn't write well. But wow, if you're the target audience for this book and make it into the meat of the thing...well, this made me cry and gave my spouse and I tons to talk about.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Religious bigotry

yungmiku's review

challenging dark funny hopeful sad fast-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

5.0

Perfect book about what it's like to grow up Evangelical Christian in America. The teenage humor is a little over the top at times but it's always relatable. Definitely recommend.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm

Moderate: Gun violence and Suicide

jasonkylebates's review

emotional funny hopeful inspiring fast-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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Alcoholism, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Death of parent

jacobclark's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective sad 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

4.75

Stellar portrait of a youth group era a decade before I was a part of one. The prose is shockingly good even being chock-full of countless Christian subculture references. It runs the gamut of emotions and hits so many interesting beats that if you heard them would seem cliched — but if you read them, they feel so fleshed out and real. Every motivation of every character of every walk of life is fully realized: every character is three-dimensional. I don’t know how many people I know working in a church that would appreciate this book, but there are dozens of us and we should all read this one. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Religious bigotry, and Death of parent

Moderate: Body shaming, Homophobia, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Grief, Car accident, Suicide attempt, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Drug use, Miscarriage, Islamophobia, Abortion, Outing, Alcohol, and War

Broadly speaking, because of the subject matter and setting in an American evangelical church youth group culture in the early 2000s none of the content is very shocking on its face. If you’ve been through that setting and have past trauma this could be either a liberating or suffocating read depending on your healing process. The worst part comes toward the end of the novel with a section where a youth pastor replicates the often-told story of people with guns coming into a church to scare kids into not denying their faith.

This youth pastor uses his younger brother as an example and threatens reuniting him with their dad in hell. The gun goes off after a scuffle and doesn’t kill the younger brother but does hospitalize him with non-threatening injuries.

The main character’s father’s death in a car accident is referred to a lot as a pivotal moment in his life and it is often discussed as to whether or not it was a suicide or under the influence.

gdavis254's review against another edition

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

A little heavy-handed but overall excellent and very memorable 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Body shaming, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Outing, Gaslighting, Sexual harassment, and War

afternoon_sunshowers's review

challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective slow-paced

5.0

Finishing a book with tears in your eyes, you KNOW it was done well. The empathy doesn’t so much leap off the page as quietly underpinning the entire book.

Isaac’s coming of age story is both foreign and relatable. I grew up in a church nothing like his but some parts rang so true and I hadn’t thought of in more than a decade. And the beats of life in the early 2000s were dead on. 

His struggles, his inner monologue conversations, REGRET, sorry…it was all just so real. So believable. 

I’m so glad I’ve followed Jason for years because I never would have picked this book up but I’m so glad I did. A story of an evangelical upbringing and subsequent questioning of the faith could have been so heavy handed and full of caricatures, but this book shines by showing the humanity even in people you just fundamentally cannot understand in some circumstances but deeply relate to in others. 

I can’t wait to reread and quite possibly annotate a book for the first time. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Suicidal thoughts, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Gun violence, Homophobia, and Death of parent