Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Falling by T.J. Newman

11 reviews

r_o_s_e's review against another edition

challenging emotional 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? No

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Emotional abuse, Kidnapping, and Confinement

Moderate: Suicide, Death, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, and Grief

Minor: Violence, Vomit, Excrement, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Murder, and Cursing

typedtruths's review against another edition

adventurous emotional medium-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping and Gun violence

Moderate: Death, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and Grief

Minor: Child death

_alyssabrown's review against another edition

fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Murder, Self harm, Grief, Suicide, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Violence, Gun violence, Physical abuse, and War

allena_inwonderland's review

challenging dark emotional 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? Yes

5.0

The way that I and my friend devoured this book is enough reason for a 5 star review! 

The first line immediately pulls you in. 
“When the shoe fell into her lap the foot was still in it.” 
The imagery throughout was so good. The book truly kept me on the edge on my chair. Any time I picked it up, I sped through it.

I loved how the author put in real details and only tweaking certain things on the plane that only flight attendants would know. 
I kept coming up with questions like “what would I do?” Or “would I have thought about that as an option?” 

Please look at ALL the trigger warnings before reading! Hands down one of the best thrillers I’ve read. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Kidnapping, Gun violence, Suicide attempt, Suicide, Murder, Death, and Grief

cait's review against another edition

challenging emotional tense fast-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Minor: Blood, Child death, Medical content, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Xenophobia, War, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Suicide, Violence, Hate crime, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Genocide, and Gore

pidgepodge's review against another edition

dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Murder, Kidnapping, Gun violence, Death, Violence, and Body horror

Minor: Self harm

scburhans's review

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

2.0

Yeah, this book was not for me. This is for several reasons: the Islamophobia, the Xenophobia, the half-assed and shallow characterization, and (surprisingly) the pacing.
I found it really cheap and frankly disgusting that Newman chose to play into stereotypes and make the bad guys Middle Eastern/Islamic. It's 2022, it's time we stop demonizing an entire ethno-religous group because of the actions of a few men 20 goddamn years ago. There were moments where it felt like Newman was trying to overcome this, but it fell flat and just came off as in bad taste. The whole brown guy = bad guy bullshit is overplayed, overused, and fucking disgusting.
I also didn't care about 90% of the characters. Theo, Jo, and the kids were pretty much the only people I cared about and, not so coincidentally, they were the only ones with complex characteristics! Bill was such a cookie cutter, rah-rah-All-American hero character that I could not care less about. So much of the plot was unoriginal as well. There were whole chapters that were almost scene for scene recreations of a Criminal Minds episode, season 10 episode 3 to be exact.
Worst of all, somehow, I was bored throughout this entire book. I have no idea how she did it, but I could only read a few pages before I would get bored and go do something else for a while. Very rarely have I ever been so incredibly bored by a thriller. Somehow, it was both faced paced and slow as hell. Everything happened quickly, but it wasn't fast enough apparently.
Not my cup of tea, probably won't reccomend it to anyone either.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Confinement, Xenophobia, Murder, Racism, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Kidnapping, Islamophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide attempt, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Gun violence, Self harm, Car accident, Emotional abuse, Medical content, Physical abuse, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Vomit

riella_reads's review

adventurous challenging tense fast-paced

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

4.5

 This was such a wild ride. Fast paced and action packed, but I saw the "twist" from the very beginning. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood, Car accident, Confinement, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Islamophobia, Kidnapping, Murder, Self harm, Suicide attempt, Suicide, and Violence

jennifer_bush_73's review

adventurous 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

This was a highly entertaining thriller: a true page-turner.  

I can’t help but love that this story’s heroes were the flight attendants. 

But what was even more impressive was the author’s ability to portray the hijackers as complicated humans. The use of flashbacks showed us the complexities of the events that  led the hijackers to this moment in their (and the airplanes crew and passengers’) lives.

Also, I found it particularly appropriate that in the background, while I was reading Falling, were news stories about Afghan cities being overrun by the Taliban since the pullout of US troops. It reminded me of Sam and Ben’s backstory.

The only thing that bothers me is the ethnicity of the hijackers. It comes very close to falling into the trope of Middle Easterners as terrorist. I don’t recall the hijackers as being identified as Muslims, but that is the logical conclusion. The author did provide a brief explanation of some of the atrocities inflicted on the Kurds by the Turks, which helped humanize the hijackers. But there is so much more to the history of the Kurds (Saddam Hussein’s chemical attack on the Kurds-Halabja Massacre). 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Gun violence, Kidnapping, and Violence

Moderate: Genocide and Murder

Minor: Pedophilia, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt

Hijacking terrorism

onkenzisshelf's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

5.0

What I Liked:

• Super fast pacing - I listened to it and usually take a month to listen to an audiobook - this took me 3 days.
• The narrator on audio was fabulous
• I really connected with all of the characters, even the bad guys
• Contained twists that I didn't see coming!

You Should Read If You Like:

• Suspenseful books

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Murder, Racism, Suicide, and Violence