Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann

16 reviews

ce_read's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

Listen, not all books have or are meant to have a "plot." Just enjoy it for what it is.

I appreciated that I didn't feel like I was being forced to come to any particular conclusions about right and wrong, kind of like... how the natural world is sometimes just brutal and so are humans (because humans are also nature, plot twist!)

I actively laughed out loud at the consequences of the little person who tried to get food by pretending to be a baby bird.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Blood, Confinement, Murder, Outing, Animal cruelty, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Ableism, Body horror, Child death, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Gore

auroralgr's review

challenging dark sad tense fast-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? No

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Animal cruelty, and Torture

angel_hardy's review

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting, Gore, Grief, Murder, Torture, Violence, Child death, Death, Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, and Emotional abuse

nyssa_jo's review

adventurous dark sad fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Child death, Death, Animal death, Torture, and Blood

Moderate: Gore, Fire/Fire injury, and Toxic friendship

nearly everyone dies

librarymouse's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• 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

This book was spooky in a way not a lot of books written for kids manage to be. It was filled with the deaths of nearly all of the small folk after the death of the little girl. Aurora falling in love (?) with the human man felt a bit odd to me because I initially though him to be the father of the little girl, as implied by the broken doll in his cabin. Otherwise, a darker implication could be that he caused the death of the little girl. The only character deaths that hit me particularly hard were Timothy and Jane. I enjoyed both of their characters and how they were opposites of one another, being examples of meek self hatred and confident bravery respectively, and both being dear to Aurora. The rest of the character deaths were glossed over and ignored by most of the cast of characters, but those two stood out as the only two to be genuinely mourned by the baby Timothy was raising, and Aurora. Zelie being the direct cause of both deaths, and Aurora being the exact of their retribution by killing Zelie and her servants feels like a fitting way to end the story. Overall, Beautiful Darkness exactly and disturbingly lived up to it's name.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Animal death, Blood, Cannibalism, Child death, Gore, Grief, Violence, and Vomit

Moderate: Confinement, Mental illness, Torture, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship

megafish's review

dark mysterious sad slow-paced

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

3.5

Very haunting and vile. This dark fairytale doesn't have much of a plot and follows "little people" around a forest of decay. It is a tale about cruelty and betrayal and I enjoyed it very much as an artpiece but wished that there was a little more substance to it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Body horror, Violence, Torture, Grief, and Blood