Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

The Flock by J. Todd Scott

2 reviews

daisystitch's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• 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

A challenging but engrossing read, The Flock is a meditation on death, love, grief and loss, and the things humans will do to find community when at their lowest. Clearly based on real life cults, the story cleverly uses intercutting storylines and cutaway references to show the characters' different perspectives on the events of the past and present. 
There are a lot of names to keep track of, and this book was a little out of my comfort zone, but it was a fascinating read which will stay with me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Car accident, Torture, Grief, Animal death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Murder, Religious bigotry, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Self harm, Alcoholism, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Incest, and Pandemic/Epidemic

I realised rather early on that the main pov character is an unreliable narrator, and this actually made me more intrigued by the story because I was never sure to what extent the apocalyptic "signs" were real, or exaggerated

sarah984's review

dark mysterious slow-paced

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

1.0

This book just did not work for me. There were so many characters (many of whom had multiple names) and we didn't spend nearly enough time with any of them for a single emotional moment to hit like it was supposed to. The cult is a huge focus but their beliefs didn't make sense to me in the context of a cult outside of a few buzzwords, and the idea that they've captivated this huge secret cabal of important people is a bit ridiculous. The child character doesn't act like a child or really do anything at all (the characters could just as easily have been chasing after a treasure chest). The first person POV character's motivation is hidden from the reader for way too long. I usually like an ambiguous ending but in my opinion this one is stupid.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, Kidnapping, and Murder

Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, Grief, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Mental illness, Religious bigotry, Suicide, Xenophobia, Blood, Car accident, Death, Gun violence, Self harm, Torture, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, and Infidelity