3.07k reviews for:

Bad Cree

Jessica Johns

4.05 AVERAGE

adventurous dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad 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: Yes

so good. 
Lol only not a 5 star to me cause I don't know when I'd be up for reading it again. So scary. Imma Alberta Metis. So I can picture this all a little too well. 
dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Bad Cree is a heartfelt family drama about battling the loss of a sister, learning to accept support from your family, and acknowledging the long-standing effects of trauma, with strong supernatural mystery elements and some minor horror. This had some great thematic content tackled in a realistic and empathetic manner, including intense topics such as grief, inter-generational trauma, depression, and substance abuse, but overall the writing fell short here and to me, missed the mark.

I wish I could give this a higher rating because it felt like a novel with great potential, but despite the skilled depiction of content I listed above, I really struggled to find this story engaging overall. Johns delivers a promising first half of the book, but it quickly started to meander and become very unfocused. I caught myself speed-reading and skimming through chapters, as I felt we were wasting time and page space in dream sequence after dream sequence, or engaging in dialogue that wasn't really moving the mystery along in a meaningful way. The plot also really begins to fall away and readers find themselves going in circles with possible clues, many things that just seem to happen for random reasons, and lackluster writing.
adventurous emotional funny hopeful 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
dark emotional reflective sad 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

3.5
A YA feel in terms of dialogue, plot.
slow-paced

This book had me in a chokehold

dream premonitions, indigenous families & ancestors, matriarchal, family ties, grief, horror, crows, nature.
dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes