Reviews with content warning for Death - Lavender House

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen

46 reviews

plumpaperbacks's review against another edition

challenging mysterious sad slow-paced

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

3.5

Though this was a good book, one I did enjoy reading, it’s also one that seems weaker as I continue to think about it. What made for an intriguing premise was, unfortunately, a rather anticlimactic story. There was a whole lot of talking about not a lot of doing, and come the end of the book, the explanations for everything felt flimsy. Maybe it’s on me for wanting a thriller from what’s clearly a mystery, but I feel like mysteries should still have some elements of drama and intensity. I didn’t get that here.

I did like the characters, though, and there’s just… There’s something uniquely compelling to me, as a queer person, about queer historical fiction. No matter how difficult it can be to read, to see the horrifying ways our predecessors were treated and the heartbreaking lengths they had to go to for their own safety, there’s something to be said about seeing that we’ve always been here, and we’ve always persisted. That’s what these characters do, too—persist.

So, yeah. Some things worked for me in this book, others didn’t, but overall, I did like it, and I do want to read the second book. I want to see more of Andy and the Lavender House family, and hopefully, I’ll really like it.

Representation:

gay protagonist
Mexican lesbian side character
bisexual Jewish side character
sapphic side characters
achillean side characters (one is also Filipino)
sapphic side couples (f/f)
achillean side couple (m/m)

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greywolfheir's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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potatoaficionado's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

4.5

So glad Kirsten recommended this to me! Basically a big historical queer mystery. Already have the next one requested from the library. The audiobook narrator was really good too.

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kayles514's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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jessiereads98's review

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mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.75

Lavender House is a semi-locked door mystery with an all queer cast. I really loved the idea of a queer take on the classic mystery, but was a bit disappointed in the execution. I would say this story is fine. It’s not the best mystery I’ve ever read, and it’s not the worst. The solution was predictable and underwhelming, but I’m willing to give another in the series a try (as the door for this to become a serial was clearly left open at the end).

The characters here really weren’t fleshed out. We get a peak at each one, and they each seem to be interesting. Unfortunately, we really never get more than an interesting peak before they’re flattened back out and left unexplored. The main character is a recently-outed gay former cop. The story attempts to grapple with his complicity in oppressing his own community a couple times, but ultimately this, like all other character development here, falls off to the wayside. It was difficult to invest in the main character because of the failure of the story to actually confront the main character’s former role as a gay cop, and it was difficult to invest in any other individual character because we didn’t really get to know them either.

The mystery was fairly obvious from the start, so at times it felt like the plot was being drawn out. I think this would’ve been more successful as a fully locked room mystery, rather than bringing in outside suspects for seemingly no reason.

The concept of this book is unfortunately just much better than the book itself.

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