Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - The Bad Beginning

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The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

9 reviews

murmurations_x's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

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

3.0

"To Beatrice - darling, dearest, dead."

Growing up you where either a Percy Jackson kid, a Harry Potter kid or a Lemony Snicket kid and I was most certainly was a Lemony Snicket kid. Oh boy, did I eat this stuff up as a kid and re-reading them as an adult is really quite enjoyable too, I am excited to make my way through the series again and where better to start than the bad beginning....

The Bad Beginning is a excellent start to these series, we get the know the Baudelaire children and their talents and intelligence (man I wanted to be Violet Baudelaire so bad) I love our villain Count Olaf, he is far more menacing than I remember. He is so creepy to Violet in this book in ways at time that went over my head as a kid but give me the creeps now as an adult.

The writing of our fourth wall breaking story teller Lemony Snicket is some of my favourite of all time, I still love the fact that Daniel Handler wrote these as pseudonym, Snicket is more a character himself than a writer and you can only imagine how my mind was blown and confused finding this out as a youngster. One of my favourite elements of these stories is the dedications to Beatrice, they are short, funny, beautiful and some times moving. The dark humor in this book .... *chefs kiss*

This story was dark, funny, adventurous and I cannot wait to head straight on to the next one!

Content Warnings

erebus53's review against another edition

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adventurous dark informative lighthearted mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

This series had been on my radar for well over a decade, but I didn't have the motivation to start until I was in a book club that has it on the reading list. The vibe of the whole thing is a bit Dickens meets Roald Dahl with less of the child slavery and fart jokes. I can't stand Roald Dahl, so it you're a fan at least you are aware of my bias.

The tone of the story is charming and peppered with conversational notes for children on vocabulary and grammar ("vocabulary and grammar", in this sense means, the words that are used, and in which order, so that they make good sense.) I laughed at parts of the story such as when a child is reading late at night and is so tired that he repeats the same part over and repeats the same part over and repeats the same part over.

I find it a little irksome that to have scary adult characters they lean into the body horror, caricaturing an amputee with two hooks for hands and a fat, gender indeterminate person with white eyes. It's a bit circus freakshow, and challenges my desire for positive representation of Disability. Call me a snowflake, I dare you.

For a book that ostensibly has nothing but unfortunate happenings, sad beginnings, and sad endings, I was still not surprised that the children use their extensive resourcefulness to solve problems. It would be utterly unengaging if there was no hope, but the whole point is that these children are relatively irrepressible (which means that compared to most people, they don't let unfortunate or difficult things stop them). Yes the ending faces them with a new valamity, but such is the way with serial stories.

Content Warnings