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Graphic: Mental illness
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Suicide, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, Alcohol
Minor: Bullying, Terminal illness, Blood
Moderate: Bullying, Suicide
Moderate: Death, Suicide
Minor: Bullying, Death of parent, Alcohol
Moderate: Bullying, Death, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Blood, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol
Eleanor and Theodora are so lesbian-coded, but writers pre-21st century will do anything but make their characters openly gay (especially Theodora. She lives with a “friend?” Please, we all know what that means)
Moderate: Blood
Minor: Bullying, Confinement, Death, Suicide, Car accident, Toxic friendship, Alcohol
And don’t know if it’s my ADHD or what, but so many of the sentences were sooo long (one even had two semicolons!) that I had no idea what was happening by the time I got to the end of it. I had to keep re-reading sections bc I kept zoning out of boredom.
I also wish that Eleanor and Theodora had more dissimilar names, bc I could not keep track of who was who for way too long. Mrs. Dudley felt like an NPC who’d only been programmed with a few set lines and very rarely deviated from them.
I was left with WAY more questions than answers. Many say this is done on purpose to be creepier - there are times where that works, but it just feels like lazy (or unskilled) writing to me. I don’t care how many awards it’s received. I love a good psychological horror/thriller/mystery, and while there were a couple times I actually got really into it, it’s disappointing that they were such short sections of the book. No good payoff in the end. While this isn’t even that old, it further cements my previous belief that older books are not for me.
Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, Blood, Toxic friendship
Moderate: Bullying, Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Alcohol
Minor: Misogyny, Sexism, Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Bullying, Suicide
Minor: Gun violence, Death of parent
Minor: Bullying, Confinement, Death, Gore, Infertility, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Stalking, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Moderate: Bullying, Suicide
Moderate: Bullying, Death of parent, Toxic friendship
Minor: Suicide, Car accident