Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

185 reviews

alexm_20's review

adventurous dark funny inspiring mysterious sad tense fast-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

This was such an easy and mysterious book! I read this as a buddy read, even though the person I’m buddy reading with hasn’t read it yet… She is going to read it soon though, so we’re going to discuss the book next week or so.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Blood, Gore, Transphobia, and Torture

Moderate: Cannibalism

Minor: Eating disorder

wedreamtoflove's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

I adored this book.

The pacing was a little strange at first, with the big event seemingly coming out of nowhere, but the pacing was quite good otherwise.

I loved the subtle nods to well-known, and not so well-known, literary worlds that were present throughout the book. References that perhaps few will know, but are meaningful to those who do.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started this, but I can safely say that it exceeded whatever expectations I had, and I can't wait to read the others in this series.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Cannibalism, Violence, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Eating disorder, Murder, Blood, Body horror, and Transphobia

erkoning's review against another edition

adventurous emotional inspiring mysterious reflective fast-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

5.0

I found this to be a really beautiful story. I fell in love with the characters, and got very invested in their journeys.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Murder, Blood, Death, Child death, Transphobia, and Violence

Moderate: Gore and Bullying

Minor: Eating disorder, Kidnapping, Acephobia/Arophobia, Dysphoria, Dementia, and War

The book centers around

murders

. There are many things mentioned from the worlds that the children have gone to. The book clearly condemns the transphobia, but there is a "mean girl" type who intentionally and repeatedly calls a trans boy a girl. Past acephobia is mentioned by an ace character, from her own perspective. Dementia is mentioned, but not gone into depth.

asahome's review against another edition

3.25

TL;DR:  A murder mystery turns a boarding school into a dangerous place. A girl deals with the problem of returning to a place she doesn’t belong when people refuse to believe she is different. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Gore, Grief, Violence, Blood, Transphobia, and Medical content

avisreadsandreads's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Grief, Murder, Toxic relationship, and Violence

Moderate: Transphobia, Self harm, Eating disorder, Panic attacks/disorders, Acephobia/Arophobia, Deadnaming, and Medical content

Minor: Dementia, Suicidal thoughts, and Cannibalism

blombern's review

dark mysterious fast-paced

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

2.0

Very interesting concept. It's all about a boarding school for children who return from portal worlds and are not accepted by their parents who want them to get better. I personally did not like this book, as it turned into a murder mystery fairly quickly. I also didn't like the explanations of the portal worlds themselves as they were put into weird categories. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child death, Death, and Murder

Moderate: Medical content, Transphobia, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, and Violence

Minor: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Abandonment, Dysphoria, Deadnaming, Eating disorder, and Sexual content

zsometimesreads's review against another edition

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

another awful middle grade boarding school murder mystery with extremely flat characters  which i have unfortunately read far too many of 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Transphobia, Emotional abuse, Domestic abuse, Blood, and Child abuse

atlantisfrost's review against another edition

dark funny mysterious fast-paced

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

4.0

This quirky novella draws from Narnia, Alice in Wonderland, and Frankenstein and reminds me of the Netflix series "Wednesday". The characters are memorable, and the writing is entertaining! The only negative aspects were that the reveal was predictable and the ending felt a bit rushed/unexplained.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood, Body horror, Murder, and Transphobia

Minor: Eating disorder

f18's review

dark emotional reflective fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Murder

Moderate: Blood, Abandonment, Bullying, Gore, and Transphobia

Minor: Animal death, Sexual content, and Cursing

theeladyking's review against another edition

mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.75

Pros: It's a boarding school murder mystery. Did you know that? I sure didn't, and boy was I excited when I realized.
There is a trans masc character who I personally would like to kiss on the cheek and/or read with all afternoon.
The protagonist is ace, which is something you *never* see.
Jill and Jack, full stop.
This book is a thoughtful exploration of trauma, longing, and grief through a hidden-world(s) fantasy scenario, and it's done really creatively.

Cons:
Nancy does feel a bit like a flat reader-insert protagonist, which could have been solved by removing the plot armor at times.
Some of the scenes feel a little rushed. (That cocoa scene. Iykyk.)
There are stock mean girls in this book, which is fine, but the flawless comebacks of our protagonists were a little cringe.

There is one [1] character of Asian descent and she is killed off almost immediately.

There is a critique to be made about the way the white characters are allowed to go to whatever worlds Seanan thinks are cool, but the POC characters have to go to worlds that are either directly culturally relevant or are directly about breaking cultural stereotypes. This is fixed in later books, so I don't feel the need to labor on this too intensely.

Most of my problems with this book could have been fixed with another 50ish pages, but I get why it's a novella.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder and Blood

Graphic body disposal