Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Poster Girl by Veronica Roth

41 reviews

rinku's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, and Murder

Moderate: Child death, Gun violence, Sexual content, Police brutality, Grief, and Alcohol

Minor: Drug abuse, Racism, and Kidnapping

zinelib's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

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

4.25

I don't encounter that many books about female anti-heroes, maybe because there's an arrogance to the anti-hero narrative that isn't as common in women and nonbinary authors. I didn't enjoy reading this book that much, but by the end I appreciated the uniqueness of likability of irredeemable characters in a dystopia. 

Sonya Kantor (Jewish name--interesting in this current context of the evil nation state of Israel) is the title character. She's imprisoned for her part in a fallen Orwellian government known as the Delegation. Her now-deceased father was a leader in the regime, and she herself was the face of it, having posed for a propaganda poster captioned "What's right is right." Thanks to the intervention of her dead fiancé's brother Alexander, she is given a chance to right a wrong. The book is the story of that journey. 

There are some good bits of writing like

All anyone wants in Building 2 is to grind time down like a molar.

Sonya is numb to her life as the youngest person in the house arrest style prison, the Aperture, but she still has some fight in her. She challenges Alexander

"It seems to me," she says, "that if your every choice is in defiance of a system, you are as much a servant of that system as someone who obeys it."

Deep!

Here, an underground agent is discussing a piece of cyborg tech called an Insight installed in everyone's eye and brain under the Delegation. 

"The Insight wasn't some aberration or anomaly," he says. "It is the symptom of a disease that still infects our population--the desire to make everything easy, to sacrifice autonomy and privacy for convenience. That's what technology is, Ms. Kantor. A concession to laziness and the devaluing of human effort." 

He goes on

"A device that you carry with you everywhere you go, a device that monitors and watches you, is no the same as one that sites in your house and plays music or dries your hair."

So not all technology is bad, but some decidedly is. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Suicide

lauraloveslemons's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Suicide, and Murder

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Violence, and Death of parent

Minor: Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Alcohol

historyoftape's review

challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.25

Maybe reading darker books on airplanes will be a new habit. In any case I read this in one day of travel, which was unexpected for me as I thought this might be a book I'd have to sit with some more. It definitely covers some themes that will haunt me for a while, but at the same time the style is more quiet and calm so I felt like I had the time to think about things without being distracted by action or too many twists. There were twists, don't get me wrong, and action, but probably due to the main character's quietness and detatchedness they were less the forefront. 

I enjoyed how more and more bits and pieces of the characters stories are revealed as time passes on, and how some decisions make more sense in hindsight with the new knowledge I gained. This book also did a really good job at making morally grey characters lovable, and even evil ones likeable. As it says at one point, no amount of loving anyone will make them a better/good person. 

All in all I really liked this, even though it is not the genre I usually go for :)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Sexual content, Gaslighting, and Sexual harassment

Spyware, being monitored by an implant

brilee92's review against another edition

challenging dark 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? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Murder

Moderate: Child death, Suicide, and Kidnapping

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Confinement, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Alcohol

rachelh92's review against another edition

emotional mysterious medium-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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Suicide, and Death of parent

katenovah's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark reflective

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

bookish_hollyx's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad fast-paced

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide

Moderate: Child death, Death, and Murder

Minor: Blood

alienexpert's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious

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

4.0

A decent dystopian novel with a common anti-tech theme. The characters and their backgrounds bring a realistic complexity to them, and knowing what is right or wrong. Roth’s writing felt a little odd to me, but it may also have been a cognitive choice to withhold small information from the reader to be revealed in a later chapter.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Violence, Blood, and Suicide attempt

theunfinishedbookshelf's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Suicide, Medical content, Death of parent, and Murder