Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Familiar

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Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

56 reviews

doahdancer's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense slow-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

Lovely story. Grab this if you are interested in a historical fiction that isn't British history based and has a very light fantasy/magic system aspect.

The ending was very satisfying and is led by the fulfillment of just fates for each character.

My one disappointment was the romance. If you like to stay out of the weeds in book relationships, this is perfect, but I would have loved to see more detail on why they became meaningful to each other. The end sort of implies they were drawn together by fate, but the human aspect of their emotions for each other were underdeveloped for my taste.

Bardugo has a terrific narrative voice that felt timeless and aptly channeled the gothic/medieval/Spanish feel of the setting. Overall wonderful read.

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desiderium_incarnate's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.0

This book was a tad confusing to me. Not in regards to what was happening, but how I feel and think about it. Talking about and discussing it helped.

It seems like Leigh Bardugo was experimenting with this one. That is of course not bad per se, but I think her (assumed) goals got in the way of her strengths. It seemed like she wrote about history to honor something and introduced a bit of magic in it because she likes it but with wanting to stick to the facts that much, she came in the way of what she does best, which is of course creating her own in depth magic systems, writing about found family and getting you to care for the people, no matter how morally grey they might be. This was sadly not the case here. Her magical system was shallow at best and with no clear rules and random power highs, lows and ways to exercise it arbitrary and illogical at worst. The first half of the book was sadly just boring and you were left waiting for the shoe to drop and something grand to happen, which sadly, did not happen as Leigh tried to stick to the history. The love story was unexpected, surprisingly explicit and weird, if you consider the age difference. I did not like the ending because it just isn't an end in my opinion. The biggest surprise and I guess character growth was Valentina, she really stole the whole book. I'm glad she found her back bone and her desire and her calling I guess. A personal disappointment for me was the lackluster heist time and I didn't like the layered intrigues and court politics as well.

The writing was still nice though. Some of her sentences I feel she wrote because she thought they would be deep and connect with people, but that just didn't work a lot because they felt wrong and forced. There was a lot of anger in this book and literally not one male character was any good, which was super sad. I am a bit disappointed but I also recognize that Leigh was probably experimenting and I feel like her heart wasn't in it, so I am still excited for her next books.

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elskede's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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tspice24's review

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emotional mysterious 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? No

3.5

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atamano's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

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

3.0

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skillyillian's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense 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

The only thing I didn't love was how insta-lovey it felt, but considering the situations that they were in when they met, well. It makes sense they'd cling to any form of escape. I did enjoy the ending, and the redemption of someone who starts the book off as a shitty miserable person was very good. I fucking loved this book and if you have the chance then you NEED to go for the audiobook, the narrator did such a wildly phenomenal job. Without a doubt the best audiobook I've ever heard

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