Reviews with content warning for Confinement - Meddling Kids

The concept of this book really intrigued me. Scooby-Doo with Lovecraftian elements where the monsters might be (and likely are) real? Sign me up!

Except this book was so disappointing in execution. From reading other reviews, I'm so glad I read the audiobook version of this, because the stage direction inserts and made up words weren't as noticeable, so I'll give the narrator mad props for making those things really unnoticeable. I thought the book started off on the right track, but around the halfway point in this book is when I really started noticing all the negatives.

First off, for being set in the 90s (and flashback-esque scenes from the 70s), I personally did not feel much nostalgia around any certain time period. This book could have mostly been reset from the 90s and plopped into modern day (or really, any other time period) with very little change; this is 100% fine, except one of the selling points promised by this book is to be nostalgic for the 90s specifically (which I personally did not find it to be).

Secondly, the ending of this book. Everything that happened in the last ~20% of the book was chaotic, unbelievable, and hard to follow.

People were dying and being resurrected left and right, dogs were getting possessed by demons/angels/random protector beings(still unclear), rituals were being cast, people were living forever; it was all just too much going on and gives the feeling that the author had a bunch of ideas in the draft and didn't edit anything out.

Seriously, so much of the end of this book was just fight scene after fight scene, with little substantial buffer between, which I personally find really boring to read (or listen to) for a significant amount of time, especially when every fight scene is "gang fights creatures, then run, then fight new hoard of same creatures, then run.... repeat".

Lastly, this book has some dangerous discussion of mental health and some questionable representation of queer people. The mental health discussion in this book is unnuanced and the whole introduction scene to the asylum has some problematic descriptions of people with and without mental health issues. The main villain ended up using transness as a device to live forever and be evil, which was super unnecessary. The lesbian character in this book is also very much a caricature of a "typical lesbian" media portrayal.

Overall, I wish I had done more research into this book before picking it up instead of taking the promises given by the author/publisher at face value.

Content Warnings

laurajones's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny fast-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

willowmae's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-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? Yes

3.5

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