sofreely's reviews
148 reviews

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Gore, and Violence

Fragile Animals by Genevieve Jagger

dark emotional reflective 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

gritty, earthy, and feverish. wonderfully intertwines the vampiric gothic with the catholic gothic to create a dirt crusted telling of shame and guilt. 

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.25

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

reflective medium-paced

3.75

All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

Sobering and moving. Campbell shows us the hidden world of death and forces us to make direct eye contact with something many of us compulsively avoid the gaze of. Beautiful stories of unseen kindness and generosity. Behind closed doors, the dead are cared for by dedicated and empathetic care workers whose heroics go unseen and quietly in the dark.

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

4.5

Moving and hard-hitting. A testament to the harm that the Hollywood industry inevitably has on child actors. 

Severance by Ling Ma

dark reflective tense fast-paced

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

5.0

Reading this was a wonderful experience.

As far as I interpreted this, Ma gently asks us to interrogate how living in and for nostalgia costs us valuable time with ourselves and our loved ones as living breathing people. 

We are surrounded by nostalgia and the past, exacerbated by social media, so much so that it's easy to forget how time marches onwards without our explicit consent.

We are routinely offered compilations of years gone by on Facebook and Google Photos that aggregate and feed our own memories back to us as we claw at the present for a semblance of the joy we seem to remember experiencing at some abstracted point in time.

Beautifully and sensitively written, this is a pandemic story with the sincerity of a memoir. 

Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder by Gabor Maté

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.5

I ended up skipping chapters that were about parenting as I was looking for something more personally applicable. It is therapeutic to see my own problems reflected back at me, although I felt the section on "healing" was a little lacking for me. I also found the authors focus on their own personal anecdotes - of which there were many - a little less interesting than the anecdotes of their patients. Overall, a comforting and empathetic read.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

adventurous mysterious 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? No

5.0

Hitching Rides with Buddha by Will Ferguson

5.0