Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

128 reviews

kakimbrew's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective 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

4.5

beautiful, impactful prose. i’m reminded of how trauma looms over us and becomes a generational curse. 
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radtj's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • 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

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gdulecki's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-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

5.0

🫨🫨🫨 WHAT!!! I am not usually a horror guy, but I was hooked by this. Exploring trauma and cptsd through a haunted house??? I think Rivers Solomon did an incredible job of writing this in a way that embodies the chaos of unpacking trauma and ~remembering~ what our brains have blocked out. I am in shambles after everything came together at the end, and while I had suspicions of some of that reveal this story really kept me on my toes. WOW. 
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andorbean's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad 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? Yes

4.5

Perhaps it shouldn’t have, but the twist at the end really got me, I didn’t see it coming. Perhaps it’s because it took me like 3 months to read and I had to keep checking it out from the library. Even though the character’s identity was not even close to me, I couldn’t help but feel close and feel their deep flaws and feelings.
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kelsylee's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

4.0

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eeefann125's review against another edition

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slow-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? It's complicated

5.0

Something I never expected.  Soo slow and eerie.  It’s just wow twist and turns that jerked me around then the final twist took me out. 
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corporateballerina's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad medium-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? Yes

4.0

Model Home by Rivers Solomon isn’t the haunted house novel I thought I was getting, but it was the one I needed. The house doesn’t contain ghosts or ghouls, but represents the deep trauma a person can face during their life.

While the novel seemed to lose steam towards the end, I always wanted to keep reading. It’s rare to find a book that highlights such profound psychological, honest, and complex themes.
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ehmannky's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad 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? Yes

4.0

A beautifully written and heartbreaking haunted house story. We follow the Maxwell siblings, three Black siblings who grew up in a racist and oppressive gated lily-white community, as they deal with the aftermath of their parents' apparent murder-suicide. Through the book you learn about the horror of their childhood, and the way their mother's drive for protection and distant love compounded their inability to find safety in suburbia. As always, I love Rivers Solomon's prose, and it lends itself really well to creating a really oppressive and haunting narrative. The themes of the ways that continued abuse haunts you throughout your life were really well done and the commentary on classism, racism, queerphobia are searing.  

The only thing that really knocked my rating of this down is that my preference in horror
is that the supernatural is real. I think the reveal that all of the hauntings were the work of the Maxwell's racist neighbors and the narrator's unresolved trauma from a lifetime of childhood rape worked really well for the story they told, but I like it when the supernatural is real.
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eceleste's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

not as world-rockingly amazing as sorrowland but it was good!! there were some moments where the stream-of-consciousness in the writing had me totally lost but i also think that it worked very well for the story. and the twist at the end (it feels insensitive to call it a twist? but it was one) was really good and i didn't see it coming but it fit so perfectly with the themes and everything.
even though the idea of the house internalising the racism of the people around it? sort of? was really interesting i think this story was one where it being the people in the neighborhood all along worked really well. even though it was really tragic for enzi.
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britt_zey's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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