Reviews tagging 'Cursing'

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim

9 reviews

skbat's review

challenging emotional mysterious 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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Death of parent, and Ableism

Moderate: Car accident, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Cancer

Minor: Suicide, War, Confinement, Bullying, Racism, Blood, Cursing, Forced institutionalization, Rape, and Police brutality

kristapeters's review against another edition

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death and Cursing

jaimc's review

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism

Moderate: Cursing, Pandemic/Epidemic, Cancer, Grief, Death of parent, and Terminal illness

Minor: Bullying, Racism, Car accident, Rape, Suicide, and War

alexisgarcia's review

emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

3.5

the more i think about this book, the less i like it. i think i like the premise and this was a book i couldn’t really put down. but the writing was definitely pretty clunky and the narrator was pretty irritating. there were a ton of aspects of the characters and plot that didn’t get flushed out. none of the characters felt well-rounded and almost all of them were incredibly unlikable.

also i hated the ending. i think it’s hard for authors to get away with an unresolved ending, and this one definitely did not get away with it. also i wasn’t willing to believe that they had no clue that Eugene could spell or have any intelligible thoughts at all. how do you spend all day and night with him without getting an inkling about it. at that point it just feels like blatant negligence and abuse. 

there were also so many parts of the plot that were convoluted and pretentious. idk, i did like a lot of this but there was also a lot that disappointed me too. also, i am BEGGING authors to stop putting covid in the background of their books when that is not apart of the main plot at all. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Racism, Car accident, Blood, Child abuse, Death, Cancer, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Infidelity, Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, Bullying, Ableism, Death of parent, Cursing, Pandemic/Epidemic, Suicide attempt, and Toxic relationship

readingwithmeredith's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective slow-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? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cursing and Bullying

kerrygetsliterary's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Pandemic/Epidemic, Xenophobia, and Racism

kimveach's review

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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

4.0

Wow!  This is a hard book to rate.  By the end of it, I wanted to give it five stars, but at the beginning, I wasn't sure I would even finish it.  Compared to "Miracle Creek," this book is overly wordy.  I understand the artistic choice as the narrator is hyperlexic (I didn't even know that was a thing.)  It is like listening to a young adult/teen girl speak stream-of-consciousness.  Annoying and too much.  I think it would have been better if this book was from multiple points of view (like Miracle Creek.)  Then, we would have pauses/breaths between all of Mia's thoughts.

As the book went on, I became increasingly interested in the ongoing story of her non-speaking brother, Eugene.  Even though I have a son with ASD, I know very little about the world of non-speakers.  Learning about the progress of therapies since the turn of this century was fascinating.  The ramifications of trying to defend a child who can't tell their side of the story in our legal system were frightening.  And with all this, we still had the mystery of what happened to the father.

Reading the reviews, I can see that some people could not get past their dislike of Mia and her wordiness.  However, I'm glad I did.  I hope the author's next book will be a bit easier to read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Death, Death of parent, Colonisation, Dysphoria, Forced institutionalization, Ableism, Medical content, Grief, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Pandemic/Epidemic, Cursing, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Panic attacks/disorders, and Toxic relationship

annoyedhumanoid's review against another edition

mysterious reflective slow-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

4.0

i loved the narration. i understand why it isn't for everyone, but my brain works in the same way so i felt at home. i also appreciated how this book advocated much more strongly for the humanity of its characters with disabilities than Miracle Creek (Angie Kim's debut novel) did. and that it took place during covid times. my main issues were that, compared to Miracle Creek, the plot:

1. wasn't as gripping. it started to drag three-fourths of the way through, and i got fed up with all the cheap foreshadowing of the form "looking back, i wish [x] hadn't happened".
2. didn't feel as expertly-crafted. though i recognize that's kind of the point—
   not all mysteries, especially missing person cases, have neat solutions; that's life
   —it was still somewhat disappointing. i'm trying to
   learn the lesson Mia did and
   accept an open ending—
   i choose to believe that her and John's mind-meld recreating the accident was a display of fraternal jeong, just the tiniest bit of magical realism.

nonetheless, this has cemented Angie Kim as an author on my radar, and i'm looking forward to her next book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Ableism, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Cancer, Violence, Infidelity, Police brutality, Sexism, Suicide, Bullying, Blood, Hate crime, Murder, Cursing, Terminal illness, and Xenophobia

Minor: Sexual violence, Confinement, Alcohol, Sexual assault, Rape, Car accident, Deportation, and Gun violence

caseythereader's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad 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

3.75

Thanks to Hogarth Books for the free copy of this book.

 - With HAPPINESS FALLS, Angie Kim once again gives us a page turner, this one a legal drama, missing person case and possible murder mystery all wrapped up together.
- I was so intrigued by Mia as the narrator of this story. She's bratty and bitter and thinks she knows everything (at first, at least). Her unique voice and the frequent detours to tell us important backstory made the book feel like a friend was relaying the story to the reader personally.
- There are some aspects of the book I wish were different - the pacing slowed way down in the second half, the footnotes felt mostly extraneous, etc. - but overall I was invested in the mystery.
- A through line of Kim's work is to make clear that disabled people are people, not childlike burdens to be pitied, which is sadly often rare in novels, especially mysteries and thrillers. I will be interested to see what disabled and neurodivergent readers have to say about this book, since I am neither of those things and neither is Kim, though she is the parent of a disabled child. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Death of parent, Police brutality, Pandemic/Epidemic, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Cursing, and Grief

Moderate: Cancer and Racism

Minor: Suicide and Rape