Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky

6 reviews

rachaelwho's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Original. Messed-up. I hated everyone but the mom and the mistress. Sometimes the terribleness of the characters was a little too on the nose, but it doesn't seem fair to take a star for that. All the acting is a bit camp and it's intentional, but the voice actor for Rachel was doing too much to make her "sound" annoying-- she's already annoying, it's in the text, you don't have to "do a voice"-- and her accent for Zahid was distractingly off. Not my favorite. I have done questions about what exactly her interest in race is and what motivated her to choose to write a pair of white-presenting biracial women, where their claim to blackness is handled unseriously. Not really sure I'm fine with that. It's not a toy.
Very nicely done story overall, callbacks were smooth and impressive, a lot of complex themes and motifs and moving parts. I'm really looking forward to where this author will be in five or ten years.
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arthages's review against another edition

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

4.5

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bxcvi's review against another edition

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emotional funny fast-paced
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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janellejx's review against another edition

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dark funny tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I was expecting a rom com but got a darker, more Sally Rooney-esque novel. The sentence structure was incredibly choppy and fragmented, which made it a little difficult to read/get into. This book was MESS-Y if you know what I mean haha. Messy characters, messy plot. But purposefully so. Similar to Rooney’s novels, the characters reek of white privilege, but at least they’re kind of self aware about it. Ultimately it’s a story about how humans are desperate to be loved and how we often take what we have for granted. Had a kind of wild ending that reminded me of the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love, but with a twist. 
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lozinja's review against another edition

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dark
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No

2.0

If you took all the redeeming characters out of Knives Out and just wrote about the Thrombeys, you’d get this book. 

I’ll also never understand not using contractions in fiction. It always makes the writing feel stilted to me. 
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deezy's review against another edition

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

3.0

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