Reviews tagging 'Cancer'

Break This House by Candice Iloh

3 reviews

bookreviewswithkb's review against another edition

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emotional funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.0

okay i really liked this book. i listened to it on audio and the narrator was so good 💯 are there some plot holes? sure. but it’s fine. let me tell you why

this is a book about gentrification, grief, addiction, and family dysfunction. how all of these things come together and explode and are more complicated than they seem. how young people try to grapple with their reality and make sense of the decisions adults make. this book is a spark of light 

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halfbloodprincess_hogwarts's review

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emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-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

4.75

I really enjoyed Break this House. Though it was a short read, the tension and stress Minah was under had me reading it in small chunks.

 Minah returning to her childhood home and visiting her relatives after 6 years made me think of my own relatives. Those memories made up majority of my childhood and reminded me of our own happy moments.

 It warmed my heart, especially along with the author's thank you letter at the end. They thanked their family for letting them write this book as a way of grieving.🥺

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foreverinastory's review

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challenging emotional mysterious reflective slow-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
Thank you to Penguin Teen for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Reflective like Iloh's debut, but in a different way.

I claimed a copy of Break This House by Candice Iloh from Bookish First. I absolutely loved Iloh’s verse debut, Everybody Looking, and so I was really eager for their prose debut. Break this House is a coming of age story about grief, divorce and familial estrangement. This book was set up to be a new favorite for me, but my brain constantly kept getting distracted. So while I did enjoy what I recall from this one, I am putting this one aside with a mini review of Not Right Now (NRN). The themes of grief and family tension were well done, but it was almost too evocative. I think with all the chaos of the past month, I couldn’t devote the time and brain power a serious book like this one needs. Iloh still has the gripping writing I came to admire from their debut, so I am excited when I do get a chance to pick this one back up.

Rep: Black cis female MC, Black cast.

CWs: Grief, death of parent. Moderate: Mental illness (depression - not the MC), addiction, drug use, alcohol consumption, cancer, death, possible suicide (left unclear).
 

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