Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook by Christina Henry

10 reviews

peeshpish's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Chronic illness, Domestic abuse, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Alcoholism, Cursing, Gun violence, Misogyny, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment

unicornofblue's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Sexism, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Animal death

Minor: Rape

bcsylve's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Death, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Fire/Fire injury, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, Kidnapping, and Alcohol

josoko's review against another edition

adventurous dark sad tense

• Strong character development? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Sexism, Torture, and Gaslighting

Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Gun violence, and Kidnapping

aely's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Terminal illness, Vomit, Kidnapping, Stalking, Abandonment, and War

Minor: Alcoholism, Cursing, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Medical content, and Alcohol

viselik's review

I just struggled to get into it. It's definitely something worth reading if this is more your thing. 

I will be giving this book another shot eventually! I do adore what they did do with Jamie and his backstory, I just kinda got too annoyed at Peter by the end of it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Kidnapping, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Misogyny, Sexism, Terminal illness, Torture, and Vomit

lixxin's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny sad 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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Gore, and Blood

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Kidnapping, and Gaslighting

Minor: Sexism

storyorc's review against another edition

dark sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Failed to follow through on the promise of nuance in the toxic friendship between Peter and Jamie but this Peter Pan beats out all the little horror movie dead girls for scariest child antagonist. The sense of dread grows and does not relent.

Pan lore purists, this is not for you. Works best as a prequel to the Disney or with only a faint memory the original.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Blood, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Sexism and Abandonment

Minor: Bullying and Rape

desiderium_incarnate's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.25

Meine Sicht auf Peter Pan wurde sehr verändert, weshalb die Originalversion viel an Leichtigkeit und Magie einbüßt. Das finde ich sehr schade. Andererseits ist es meisterhaft, wie gut dieses Buch zu der Welt passt. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Misogyny, Sexism, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

morganish's review against another edition

dark sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Full disclosure, I was in a rush and needed to read this for a book club, and could only get it on audiobook, so... 1. There might not be things I remember as clearly as if I was just reading. But 2. This was my first audiobook since... middle school!? Just, a really long time. I kind of just want to download all my thoughts about becoming a recent audiobook convert here instead of a review, but I'll do my best to focus on the actual book instead. 

Lost Boy is a Peter Pan prequel from Hook's perspective, where Peter Pan is a monstrous, manipulative sociopath. It's a really fantastic metaphor for how abuse, especially abuse of minors, works psychologically by pitting victims against each other, explored in a variety of ways that absolutely pull no punches. If you can hang with that kind of content, I can't really recommend it highly enough, and definitely sets this book at least at 4 stars for me. 

But as deeply entrenched as I was in the narrative, there's a particular plot direction somewhere vaguely in the middle of the book that really, really didn't work for me. From a queer lens in specific, it felt like a bit of an oversight how it's handled, though I'm not sure straight/cis readers will notice or think much of it. It soured a lot of the rest of the story in overall enjoyability for me personally. And then, ultimately, the ending felt like it was trying to wrap up and intersect with the canonical version of Peter Pan. This focus on intersection felt like it undermined the story's powerful themes, trying to hit a checklist of events instead of giving Lost Boy the emotional/psychological ending it deserved. For me, these two negative aspects stood out enough to take what was initially a really gripping story and put it in the category of enjoyable for the moment, but not making it into a new favorite. 

If you like retellings or tie-in stories about classic children's tales, especially if they shed a new, more adult, darker light on the original, you should seriously consider picking this up. From what I've seen so far, it succeeds at this more than any other retelling I've encountered. However if you're triggered by stories that realistically explore how abuse works, I definitely would advise proceeding with caution. And I'd also say if you have no tolerance for stories that don't consider/make space for queer interpretations of certain kinds of plot devices or storylines, this might not be the story for you. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, Gaslighting, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, Kidnapping, Grief, and War

Minor: Xenophobia, Death of parent, and Abandonment

Additional content warnings: *

A character who is previously believed to be another lost boy is accidentally revealed to have breasts. No acknowledgement is made either by any characters or the text itself that this person could be trans. Additionally the MC (who had been growing close to said character before the reveal) and all of the other boys instantaneously find themselves with crushes on her, the lone major female character in the text. Which I read as problematic for being both a sexist portrayal of female characters and as a weird, unnecessarily forced "no homo" decision for the book.