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jay_da_bookworm's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
Tender Beast had its moments where it had me clinging on to every word, but in between those moments, I was bored.I really wanted to enjoy it, but it just kinda missed the mark for me overall.
I wanted a thriller that kept me guessing until the very end, and unfortunately, this wasn’t the book. I was able to figure out a majority of the plot twists by the time I was halfway through because the clues made it so obvious where the plot was headed.
Honestly, I was more stoked than surprised when the big reveal took place because I had pretty much guessed what was going to happen by the time I was halfway through the book. I hope Liselle’s other books live up to their hype."
I wanted a thriller that kept me guessing until the very end, and unfortunately, this wasn’t the book. I was able to figure out a majority of the plot twists by the time I was halfway through because the clues made it so obvious where the plot was headed.
Honestly, I was more stoked than surprised when the big reveal took place because I had pretty much guessed what was going to happen by the time I was halfway through the book. I hope Liselle’s other books live up to their hype."
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Death, Gore, and Violence
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury and Torture
Minor: Animal death, Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, and Vomit
jackiesreadingjourney's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-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
4.25
Oooooh, this was GOOD. 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻
This is about a wealthy black family whose mother dies on the same day that the youngest son allegedly kills his girlfriend. The siblings were already grappling with the possibility that their youngest brother could be a murderer, and when the matriarch of the family passes away, they’re left in shambles.
Sunny is the main character, and she is everything her name suggests. She’s the family’s little beacon of hope and happiness with her unwavering positivity and plastered-on smiles, but inside she’s a totally different person.
She was supposed to be taking over as the head of the family, but her older sister snatched the opportunity from her. Even though their mom told Sunny privately that she’d be the leader, the oldest sister claimed that their mom picked her to lead and no one questioned it.
Sunny is tired of playing her happy/sunshine role in a family that is clearly harboring dark secrets from her, and she decides to investigate on her own, especially when more murders start happening, and she starts getting attacked by a masked figure who is also leaving cryptic notes about her family. She also starts getting warned about some entity called the “Milk Man.”
This was SO CREEPY. It was told in Sunny’s POV, but we also get journal entries from her deceased mom when she was younger and first came into contact with the Milk Man.
This was dark, gave pure horror movie vibes, and was also a very thoughtful look at how young black men are treated when they’re accused of a crime, and how wealth plays a role. Sunny is a teenage girl so we also get to see her high school experience through her eyes (especially since her family owns the high school she’s attending), and we get to see an analysis of race and privilege set in a very eerie landscape.
All of this to say, this has left me unsettled, and I have goosebumps. The twists and reveals were fantastic, and I loved so much of this! I think we can all relate to Sunny, especially as women when everyone expects us to always have a smile on our faces.
My only issue with this was the pacing. It did lag in many sections, but aside from that, I thought this was well done! Also, I really appreciated the trigger warnings at the beginning of the book!
Thank you so much, Simon & Schuster, for the advanced copy & the audiobook! The audiobook was pretty good - except with the journal entries- it was hard to tell when she wasn’t narrating from Sunny’s perspective and set her to the mom. Aside from that, I am so grateful to have gotten these advanced copies! These publish at the end of this month!
This is about a wealthy black family whose mother dies on the same day that the youngest son allegedly kills his girlfriend. The siblings were already grappling with the possibility that their youngest brother could be a murderer, and when the matriarch of the family passes away, they’re left in shambles.
Sunny is the main character, and she is everything her name suggests. She’s the family’s little beacon of hope and happiness with her unwavering positivity and plastered-on smiles, but inside she’s a totally different person.
She was supposed to be taking over as the head of the family, but her older sister snatched the opportunity from her. Even though their mom told Sunny privately that she’d be the leader, the oldest sister claimed that their mom picked her to lead and no one questioned it.
Sunny is tired of playing her happy/sunshine role in a family that is clearly harboring dark secrets from her, and she decides to investigate on her own, especially when more murders start happening, and she starts getting attacked by a masked figure who is also leaving cryptic notes about her family. She also starts getting warned about some entity called the “Milk Man.”
This was SO CREEPY. It was told in Sunny’s POV, but we also get journal entries from her deceased mom when she was younger and first came into contact with the Milk Man.
This was dark, gave pure horror movie vibes, and was also a very thoughtful look at how young black men are treated when they’re accused of a crime, and how wealth plays a role. Sunny is a teenage girl so we also get to see her high school experience through her eyes (especially since her family owns the high school she’s attending), and we get to see an analysis of race and privilege set in a very eerie landscape.
All of this to say, this has left me unsettled, and I have goosebumps. The twists and reveals were fantastic, and I loved so much of this! I think we can all relate to Sunny, especially as women when everyone expects us to always have a smile on our faces.
My only issue with this was the pacing. It did lag in many sections, but aside from that, I thought this was well done! Also, I really appreciated the trigger warnings at the beginning of the book!
Thank you so much, Simon & Schuster, for the advanced copy & the audiobook! The audiobook was pretty good - except with the journal entries- it was hard to tell when she wasn’t narrating from Sunny’s perspective and set her to the mom. Aside from that, I am so grateful to have gotten these advanced copies! These publish at the end of this month!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Violence, Death of parent, Blood, Torture, and Murder
bookishmillennial's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-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
disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial
Had Shirley come to warn me about her family or mine?
Thank you to Simon & Schuester & Netgalley for the ARC - I provided this honest review of my own accord. Wow wow wow wow WOW I was truly creeped the fuck out by this and was not expecting anything that I read. *still processing*
The book opens with matriarch Ainsley Behre de-planing and walking to the airport garage, before she meets her untimely death after a tragic slip on the icy walkways. Then, we are introduced to the first-person POV of second-to-youngest child, Sunny Behre, and we meet her younger brother Dom, the "middles" Kiley and Darren, and the eldest child Karter. Their father Jay and Karter take up leading the family after Ainsley's death, as the family quietly tries to deal with Dom's charge of second-degree murder of his late girlfriend Torri (she died exactly one year before Ainsley passed away). The family is quite well off, and they run an high school/full-scholarship academy specifically for underprivileged kids, to give them the education and advantages that they normally would not in the public school system. Since Ainsley's death, she left behind something for each of her kids, and she leaves a note for Sunny, stating: "Take care of Dom," which is just as helpful as it is elusive. When more and more murders happen at the school, Sunny and Dom team up to find out who is doing this and trying to frame him for it.
I spent the entire book at the very edge of my seat because I could not decide what the outcome and final explanations would be. I refused to believe there was any validity to the Milk Man boogeyman horror stories, and almost with equal fervor, I refused to believe in a world where any of the Behres were capable of such malicious, horrifying behavior. LS deserves her flowers for the intricate and calculated way she developed these characters, their dynamics, and the societal context that they existed in. It broke my heart to see Sunny reckon with the way that she, her siblings, and her parents treated Dom and the way no one ever questioned or challenged it. They simply allowed him to feel excluded from his own family, and pushed him into the arms of those who likely weren't the best for him. Sunny grapples with being the person she thought her mom wanted her to be versus the kind of person she feels proud to be, and that's a central theme that runs through this story.
AND it's not just Sunny who Ainsley and Jay Behre did a disservice; it is all of their kids. Regardless of the Milk Man cult being real or not, they passed that trauma and those expectations onto their kids, rather than try to confront this together as a family. They encouraged their children to internalize messaging about the way things "had to be" versus trying to envision a different life for all of them, one where they didn't have to hide or sacrifice one for the good of them all. They were fully resigned to a fate they thought they could not escape, which I found could be a mirror to the systematic racism and classism that surrounded them. In this light, I can't wholly blame them; they tried to make it work within a system that was already rigged against them. However, I was so moved by Sunny's choices in the end, choosing hope and envisioning a different way, rather than simply accepting her fate.
Honorable mention to Mercy and Shyanne, whose authenticity and upfront demeanors were utter perfection. I loved the scene with Sunny towards the end where they have an open dialogue about how Sunny's privilege, facade, and position within the school played such a massive role in how others perceived her. I love a little tough love, and I appreciate a call in. Craig, from the very beginning, is a predictably dusty crusty dude, and you know how it's kind of horrible but you still kind of root for someone to die in a slasher like this? That's this dude (at least for me lollll). Last honorable mention to Jeremy, Dom's bestie and an overall cutie whose vibes I approved of from the very start!
see content warnings below - this was wildly fucked up so take care while reading
Quotations that stood out to me:
"You know that if you suffer just so other people are happy, that's not okay, right?"
I didn't know how to tell my brother that was my strength. That was what Mom had admired about me. Because part of me thought that maybe it wasn't okay either. But also, I wasn't sure how to say that I didn't know how to stop.
Maybe Marsha Allen had a point. Maybe our family was more beast than bear. Not majestic predators but something else. Something twisted and toxic and snarling. I'd spent so much time pretending to be otherwise when I should have just embraced the monster I was meant to be.
There was something very wrong with this family. And it wasn't the "Milk Man," but it was something.
Mom shouldn't have made anyone leader. Normal families didn't have leaders. The pressure of our success and survival should have never put on one person.
Our parents were not the same parents to all of us. I got the best of them. But Karter ... Karter had gotten a very different version. And she'd thought we hated her, and still, she was doing something she believed would help us all. My sister loved us so much. And she didn't know how to tell us, so she'd done this instead.
Mom had us in the academy trying to act like we were the same as those kids when we weren't. I knew now, more than ever, that pretending nothing was wrong wasn't how you protected people. My friends hadn't wanted me to act like I was like them. They'd just wanted me to take a minute to understand how their lives might be different and actually listen when they told me.
Because how could we call ourselves a family if we could only be that by leaving someone behind? Maybe that was how Mom and Dad needed to survive. But it didn't need to be how we did it. We weren't beasts anymore.
The Milk Man might be a monster, but we were Behres. And he would come to learn that we had claws too.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Stalking, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Classism, Cultural appropriation, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Torture, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Confinement, Kidnapping, Vomit, Violence, Toxic friendship, Mental illness, Murder, Grief, Gore, Blood, Death, Racism, Toxic relationship, Abandonment, and Infidelity
pagesihavenotyetread's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Eerie, dark, and deliciously entrapping.
I was lucky to receive an ARC for this book, and I’m so glad I did. Without going into too much detail, here’s my review:
Liselle Sambury has crafted a beautifully tragic story that kept my heart beating out of my chest as I devoured page after page. As someone that seldom reads thriller, this was an uncharacteristic pick for me as a reader, but I LOVED it! I would highly recommend to those interested in the thriller genre or looking for a dark mystery to send their thoughts swirling. I loved that the author included important perspectives on wealth and race, especially in reference to the justice system. I think that’s something that many people like to try to pretend doesn’t exist, but it’s so important to talk about. I also found that the author’s use of our main character’s POV intertwined with journal entries from her mother was incredibly interesting and made unraveling the mystery of the murders so compelling. I found myself trying to decipher and predict how we got from point A to B between Sunny and her mother’s words.
I was lucky to receive an ARC for this book, and I’m so glad I did. Without going into too much detail, here’s my review:
Liselle Sambury has crafted a beautifully tragic story that kept my heart beating out of my chest as I devoured page after page. As someone that seldom reads thriller, this was an uncharacteristic pick for me as a reader, but I LOVED it! I would highly recommend to those interested in the thriller genre or looking for a dark mystery to send their thoughts swirling. I loved that the author included important perspectives on wealth and race, especially in reference to the justice system. I think that’s something that many people like to try to pretend doesn’t exist, but it’s so important to talk about. I also found that the author’s use of our main character’s POV intertwined with journal entries from her mother was incredibly interesting and made unraveling the mystery of the murders so compelling. I found myself trying to decipher and predict how we got from point A to B between Sunny and her mother’s words.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Blood, Death of parent, Gore, and Violence
Minor: Classism, Child death, Drug use, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cursing, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Kidnapping, Racism, Suicide attempt, Torture, and Vomit
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