Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

All Hallows by Christopher Golden

17 reviews

finnsnowbevi's review

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Blood, Body horror, Addiction, Alcohol, Death, Abandonment, Grief, Emotional abuse, Stalking, Alcoholism, Child death, Gore, Confinement, Cursing, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Lesbophobia, and Mental illness

Moderate: Pedophilia, Outing, Self harm, Suicide attempt, Kidnapping, Child abuse, Racism, and Vomit

Minor: Medical content and Sexual content

klhunter42's review

dark fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Infidelity, and Homophobia

pinkalpaca's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious 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? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Child death, Homophobia, and Alcoholism

Moderate: Child abuse

hollyberry_books's review

dark mysterious tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Gore, Child abuse, Kidnapping, Infidelity, Body horror, Self harm, Violence, Child death, Outing, Murder, Blood, Misogyny, Death of parent, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Vomit, Homophobia, Sexual harassment, and Alcoholism

mishmashreads's review

dark mysterious slow-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

3.0

Not a terrible book. But definitely not a good book either. 

The writing was good… ? I loved the feel of the neighborhood. Gave me Donnie Darko vibes. I love getting to know the characters and seeing their lives intersect. But also, the writing was bad. The phrase “hitched his/her breath” was used so many times it was distracting. One chapter literally spent pages building a climatic situation and then ended with the full sentence “And he died.” Also the whole Ruth and Zack storyline is super weird and I did not like it. Are we supposed to be learning about monsters among us? Cuz very bad job of pulling that metaphor off, if so.

There are a lot of characters with each chapter focused on one of them. Don’t put it down for too long or you will forget who is who. 

The book does not actually get anywhere close to action until 150+ pages in. Thank goodness the chapters were short. Christopher Golden should skip horror and just write fiction novels. I liked his characters. I liked his writing when it wasn’t in the “spooky” part of the book. The horror part of the book (aka the second half of the book) is not good.

3 stars, but if I was rating based on horror alone, it would have been 2. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Infidelity, Child abuse, Sexual assault, Vomit, Pedophilia, Violence, Murder, Homophobia, Death of parent, Child death, and Death

Moderate: Racial slurs, Misogyny, Outing, Racism, and Lesbophobia

Minor: Self harm and Suicidal thoughts

molsreads's review

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Murder, Blood, Violence, Death, and Child death

Moderate: Alcoholism, Lesbophobia, Infidelity, and Homophobia

louiepotterbook's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Genocide, Bullying, Child abuse, Misogyny, Self harm, Torture, Violence, Rape, Gore, Homophobia, Suicide attempt, Death, Death of parent, Outing, Pedophilia, Alcoholism, Blood, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Lesbophobia, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, and Abandonment

minimicropup's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.0

Adventurous, curious, reflective. 

We follow several families with POVs from kids, teens, and adults around the neighbourhood over the course of Halloween night in 1984. 
🇺🇸 Set in Coventry, Massachussetts, USA
🎃 Halloween night setting - big parties, small hang outs, trick-or-treating!

🎧 Narration was good - sometimes the voices of smaller kids was a bit silly sounding but didn't knock me out of the story. 

🐺🐕Growls, Howls, and Tail Wags: 

🤫 I had audio only and would say this is def a pay-attention story on audio. The third person omniscient narration is deep in different character's minds and we switch POVs as needed. I loved it, it was done well and worked for the story without being repetitive or confusing, but if I got distracted for a second or two  I'd be slightly lost for a bit if we had switched characters or setting.

🫣 Lots of suburban scandals and drama, but it isn't OTT or soap opera, campy style. Pretty realistic family and relationship dynamics. 

👍 There are a lot of characters and families, and  when audio only, that can be hard to follow. For me it was excellent because we get a show-not-tell style introduction to each of them and we spend more time with them at the beginning of the book before the action starts up so we can rapidly switch between them later without being lost. It probably also helps that I cared about (or was at least curious about) what happened to all of them. 

🤕 There are quite a few action-fight-survival type scenes. I find I lose interest in that type of scene mainly because it's hard for me to imagine a fight scene happening quickly when I'm reading it so everything is sort of slow-mo in my imagination. I still enjoyed the overall plot, and if you like action-fight-escapes vs monsters then this could be a huge perk! The story starts off gradually layering the creepy, dark vibes and then proceeds to the faster paced wildness. 

🤐 Speaking of which, those fight and escape scenes are "if these monsters existed, this is how it would go down" realistic. So...don't get too attached....there are some surprisingly sad scenes. 

Mood Reading Match Up: 

• Cozy, '80s, fall Halloween trick-or-treat, home-made haunted woods, and block party horrors
• Creepy kids, stay-out-of-the-woods creature feature with action survival suspense
• Suburban  behind-closed-doors drama
• Heartwarming and heartbreaking BFF coming-of-age stories

Content Heads-Up: Physical abuse (relationship). Alcohol (enabling, addiction). Infidelity (discovery, separation/divorce). LGBTQ coming-of-age rep (good to excellent; vocally supportive family and friends). Homophobic characters (outing, shaming, verbal and emotional abuse). Kidnapping (insinuated). Child abuse (insinuated). 

Format: Scribd Audio

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Outing, and Child abuse

bloomandgloom's review against another edition

slow-paced

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

2.5

I had such high hopes for this book. It gave me the closest vibe of the Trick r' Treat movie and I appreciate it. The different stories and paths weaving together was a great way to tell a Halloween story. That's really the best part of this book. There isn't any horror to this story, at all. It's set in the 1980s in mid east Massachusetts. I appreciated the landmark references since I know the area and understand the forest behind the house vibes it was going for. 

I didn't care about any of the characters in this story, no one had enough development to make me root for them. The Cunning Man was not scary or interesting since we know nothing about him. The book would have seemed much better if there had been a local legend or a story people told young children to scare them but no one believes it. It could have done with some references of missing children on Halloween in different locations across the country or world. Overall, it just needed a little more mystery and lore to make it more believable. A family member also could have known someone that went missing to tie it together. 

I am not an author so I'm not going to pretend like it would have been easy or quick to add all of that in. 

Sadly, this was disappointing and not something I'd recommend as a Halloween read. I wouldn't even recommend it to someone younger because they might find it scary since there are a lot of adult topics discussed. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Lesbophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Racial slurs, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Gore, Homophobia, and Misogyny

Moderate: Alcohol, Outing, Alcoholism, Xenophobia, Sexual harassment, Bullying, Infidelity, Violence, Sexism, Pedophilia, and Kidnapping

zakura317's review against another edition

dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Body horror, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, and Death of parent

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Pedophilia, Toxic friendship, Outing, Alcoholism, and Homophobia

Minor: Racism