Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - The Dark

Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

The Dark by Emma Haughton

6 reviews

minimicropup's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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

Setting the Scene: 🇦🇶 A research station near the South Pole in Antarctica

POV: We follow a doctor fresh from a recent break-up of a long term relationship seeking to get away from reminders of the incident. They apply to a last-minute posting at the Antarctic South Pole research station.

Mood Reading Match-Up:

Amateur sleuthing, sneaking, snooping
Mysterious death, who-to-trust closed circle murder mysteries
Unsettling long winter night in isolated Antarctic research station
Touches on elements of isolation, survival, community, conflict, fragility, overcoming the past, and opportunity.

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🐺 Growls, Howls, and Tail Wags 🐕

🎬 Tale-Telling: The story is told from the first-person perspective of Kate, our main character. Her thoughts, ruminations, poor judgement, and inability to read the room made the story fascinating but sometimes crossed into frustrating. Overall, it felt realistic but allow for some suspended disbelief as we near the ending.

🤓 Reader’s Role: We’re stuck in Kate’s mind seeing everything through her eyes, hearing her thoughts, seeing the trainwreck that is her life, and watching her try to piece together the puzzle (sometimes painfully so as she seems to be on the lower end of common sense and emotional intelligence!).

👥 Characters: See above – Kate makes a lot of personal misjudgements and confusing choices. Some of that can be explained by her personality and addictions, but regardless of where she is in her intoxication levels, she seemed like the same person with the same ability (er, inability) to navigate social constructs. It was at least consistent. I don’t think you have to like her, but was hard to constantly be in her head. The other cast of characters took me awhile to get a handle on because they’re introduced in a haphazard way (X is cheerful. Y has dark hair. Z is a meteorologist). But they each had their own personalities and quirks, and I enjoyed figuring out who was capable of what.

🗺️ Ambiance: The isolation and survival situation were at the forefront without being shoved down our throats. The Antarctic was also a main character with its inherent dangers and unknowns. The research station gave us claustrophobic closeness and was the perfect setting where a small incident could escalate to a life-threatening crisis. I went on a YouTube binge of Antarctic research station tours, it was so fun and I think the setting was well-captured.

🔥 Fuel: Kate’s subjective lens colors everything, so a large part of the story is us wondering what is really happening versus what’s a product of her overactive imagination, intoxication, or misinterpretation. I like that most of the incidents could have rational explanations as well as more nefarious ones, which kept us guessing and gave us plenty of red herrings. Later in the story we get some high-stakes survival that started to feel over-the-top, but it didn’t ruin the book. Kate’s mysterious past where she would ‘bait’ us by bringing it up in her inner monologue then nope out of giving us any context didn’t work for me. It didn’t serve the story keeping that hidden and if anything, us knowing could have added suspense and much needed sympathy for why she is the way she is.

🚙 Journey: The plot starts with the promise of an intriguing adventure, but the withholding of the main character backstory and her sometimes exasperating behavior sometimes made it feel stuck in a rut. Despite this, the setting and unfolding mysteries kept me reading, with gradual building of higher stakes and suspense.

Random Thoughts

🤓 What worked: The Antarctic backdrop. The unique and captivating setting with lots of opportunity for mystery and drama. The tension between the characters, the darkness, and isolation.

🫠 What didn’t: Kate’s actions, especially her inability to connect the dots or grow from her experiences. The lack of another perspective for us to view her and the situation from—or at least a peek into the minds of her fellow researchers.

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Content Heads-Up: Medical (death, decomp; not too graphic, on page). Pregnancy (graphic; on page). Drug use and addiction (prescription). Alcohol use. Cannabis use. Violence (fighting, gun, weapons). Mental illness (depression, anxiety, PTSD, hallucinations; recall and feelings of).

Rep: Turban-wearing, Black, White characters. Lesbian, gay, heterosexual characters. Diverse cultures/countries of origin. Cisgender.

👀 Format: Kindle

“Reviews are my musings 💖 powered by puppy snuggles 🐶 refined by my AI bookworm bestie ✨”

Content Warnings

nelemon's review against another edition

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4.0

I wasn’t sure if I liked this book or not for the longest time, but I ended up really enjoying it!

First of all, the setting is great. I’ll say it again: I love snowy settings, I love an isolated location murder mystery, I love survival stories, and this book had all of those things. Shit going down on a research station in Antarctica during winter? Sign me up right now! This was a huge plus point going towards me liking this.

A few things did bother me at first. Although I did get a feel for the different characters the more I got into the story, the skeleton crew staying for the winter season was introduced in like one paragraph (it’s like twelve people) and stuff like that stresses me out, makes me feel like I have to take notes.

I also couldn’t really warm up to the main character. She was just kind of meh to me. Although she does have her backstory and baggage and stuff, I still found her a little too bland. It was also kind of funny how she was so bummed out when the crew didn’t welcome her as enthusiastically as she would have liked, when she literally is only there as a replacement for a crew member who died. Pretty obvious that some people would feel conflicted about her being there. Anyways!

There were also some things where she acted super unprofessionally, and didn’t get the most obvious things which was frustrating. She’s also weirdly sensitive about marijuana for someone abusing much stronger drugs herself. But to be honest she really came into herself towards the end and became a little more interesting to follow.

In general, I really started liking this book during the second half once shit stars going down. Thing after thing starts happening and it got quite dramatic at times, but I loved it, I was on the edge of my seat for the last hundred pages or so when things really go in survival mode!

I will admit it’s not too hard guessing the culprit, and I found the motive reveal a little… if not unbelievable, at was definitely weird. But I didn’t mind that because I enjoyed the overall ride.

I also liked that there were a few instances where the non-native speakers didn’t understand certain English phrases and asked for clarification. It is a small pet peeve of mine when on an international crew everyone miraculously speaks perfect English including slang and idioms. I really liked that the book did that differently.

This was a fun isolated location thriller!

Content Warnings

louisegraveyard's review against another edition

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adventurous dark informative mysterious 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

4.5

Content Warnings

leonoor's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

Book started out a little bit slow but storyline and characters became more interesting as the book progressed.

Content Warnings

orlagal's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-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

3.0

Content Warnings

ciann82's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

I would really recommend this book to anyone who is getting into the murder mystery genre like myself. The writing is absolutely fantastic and it genuinely made my heart race at certain moments. At first I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to go along with the mc but I was definitely proved wrong.

There’s a lot of tension and build up but it kind of just fizzles out and starts building up again. There’s not really a satisfying resolve or explanation for a few smaller things.

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