Reviews tagging 'Grief'

We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson

72 reviews

alienexpert's review

emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

An interesting read contemplating mortality and what drives us to stay alive. It held my attention well and I found the formatting of journal entries with theories about the end of the world every couple of ‘chapters’ to be very fluid and helped framing the timeline. I would say there were a few parts that did feel more YA aligned, but nothing that led to me being disengaged with the story. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Grief, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Miscarriage, Bullying, Death, and Gaslighting

lilcurious's review against another edition

2.5

Very sad gay teenagers. Heartwarming despite everything. Badly integrated anecdotes from a future/parallel reality. Overall forgettable. (Check TWs, some heavy stuff)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Suicide, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Grief

Moderate: Abandonment, Self harm, Miscarriage, Child abuse, Chronic illness, and Homophobia

0lli_e's review

emotional funny reflective medium-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? Yes

4.5

Some of the dialogue feels manufactured at times, and i found the plot to be a little slow about halfway through. but it's still a great book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Rape, Bullying, Grief, and Suicide

itscolleen's review

emotional 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

2.5

An interesting idea, but the main character was way too angsty for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Suicide, and Grief

Minor: Miscarriage

gbeanie's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective

• Strong character development? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Grief, and Bullying

Moderate: Miscarriage, Rape, and Drug use

Minor: Self harm and Child abuse

greta_reads's review

dark emotional funny hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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

2.5

(sorry, english isn’t my first language) Wow. I really did not know what to rate this book. Because throughout most of it I really, really hated it. But I did not dislike it because of the way it was written or the story itself, but purely because of the fact that it had me in such a depressed and tense mood. The style that the story was written in wasn’t my favorite, but it felt authentic, even though I found it very hard to love the characters even if they were very relatable in part. So overall I‘m very torn, weather to recommend this book or not. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Alcohol, Emotional abuse, Suicide, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Blood, Child death, Death, Rape, Abandonment, Pandemic/Epidemic, Domestic abuse, Addiction, Alcoholism, Physical abuse, Suicide attempt, Body shaming, Bullying, Dementia, Dysphoria, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, and War

Moderate: Drug use and Drug abuse

Minor: Fire/Fire injury

kascjam's review

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

2.0

The main reason I rate this book so poorly is because of the way it was presented to me. At my local library, it was on a shelf titled "Books that will give you hope". I thought to myself, damn, I could use some of that right now. And the title stuck out to me, as well as the blurb, so I checked it out.
 
I finished this book in roughly a day and a half. Not because I was so enamored by the story or anything, but because it was genuinely so depressing I had to know if there was some shred of hope that might be presented in the end. I cried more times than I could count, which. I guess that counts for something. Points for evocative writing, I guess?
 
But um, seriously, any depressing thing you can imagine happening to someone, it happens in this book. I'm not even joking. At some point I thought to myself, Jesus Christ. Well, at least it can't get any worse, right? And then it got worse.
 

Additionally, the scene towards the end with the rich closeted kid attempting to sexually assault Henry felt extremely unnecessary. Like, it's not out of character for the rich kid (I forgot his name) to react terribly and do something crazy, but, I mean. Come on. It was the one thing that I was like, well, at least they didn't go there. And then it did go there.
 
And the ending? I'm still mad about it. I know the message it that like, the future is uncertain but we should appreciate what we have now, but what a letdown. Granted, as I mentioned before, I was reading this expecting something more inspiring than...whatever that was. But still. So much is still left unanswered -- and this book is somehow like four hundred pages! 

Not to beat a dead horse here, but also, why the hell were there randomly scenarios in which the world ends just peppered in throughout the book? (Rhetorical question; I know why.) It was already sad, and it didn't add anything to the story, in my opinion, save for making me break down more than already was. And yes, I probably should have just taken the L and put the book down at some point, but I was so invested and certain the ending would be worth it that I couldn't get myself to.

 

Maybe under different circumstances, I would've enjoyed this book. I did like the overall concept, to be fair; it was just incredibly depressing for, as far as I could tell, no real reason.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Dementia, Self harm, Bullying, Suicide attempt, Rape, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Homophobia, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Grief, and Death

Moderate: Miscarriage

deleore's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad 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? It's complicated

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Sexual assault, Domestic abuse, Child death, Miscarriage, and Death

Moderate: Rape

louisallama's review against another edition

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

3.0

In theory this sounds like the kind of book I'd eat right up but unfortunately it wasn't. My two main issues are that I didn't connect with the characters, and that I wasn't satisfied with the way the book handled the world ending in 144 days. This book was by no means bad, it just wasn't for me. 
I think I found it very hard to connect with Henry is because the book felt quite juvenile. Usually I'm fine with YA but for whatever reason it really didn't work for me this time. I'm not sure why but I was just completely uninvested in Henry's life and emotions. He has multiple very big and real problems that are poinient even to adults, and yet he never got past feeling like a whiny teenager to me. 
The other problem is that there are a whole slew of deep, existential questions that could come of finding out that aliens have given you the choice to stop the world from ending in 144 days and this book explores basically none of them. I understand that it was more used as a vehicle for Henry deciding whether he wanted to live, without the trauma of making an actively suicidal main character for the whole book, but he ends up being very blasé about it. The closest we got to Henry asking these questions of himself, was him asking the extremely obvious, "am I going to push the button" throughout the book, as well as asking every character what they would do if they knew the world was going to end but they could stop it, both of which are resolved every time within a paragraph or two. I would think that this is something that I would agonise over, especially if I wasn't fully swayed one direction or the other. And while Henry's life truly is a steaming pile of garbage, linking this back with not feeling connected to him, I never actually felt like he was suicidal at any point, or ever had any conviction to press or not press the button.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Death, Dementia, Physical abuse, Abandonment, Bullying, Grief, and Suicide

Moderate: Self harm, Miscarriage, Cursing, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, and Pregnancy

teaselkie's review against another edition

challenging emotional sad slow-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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Bullying, Suicide, Toxic relationship, and Mental illness

Moderate: Rape, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Injury/Injury detail, and Dementia