Reviews with content warning for Fatphobia - When Life Gives You Vampires

Reviews tagging 'Fatphobia'

When Life Gives You Vampires by Gloria Duke

46 reviews

gablechelsea's review

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emotional funny lighthearted fast-paced

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

3.0

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thewellbitch's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

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

2.0

The premise was interesting: what happens when you hate your body but you get turned into a vampire and your body will never change for eternity? I truly could not stand the main characters after a while. However, it's a fast read and the plot is not too bad, so it could still be a fun read for someone who likes certain types of characters.

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malslibrary1901's review

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slow-paced

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

0.5

This book caught my eye at Barnes and Noble. The cute cover and synopsis had me so excited. Now I regret spending money on this. This reads as a rough draft of a novel. The author constantly used "Obvi" in sentences which was very irritating. We meet Lily's best friend and for the remainder of the book Lily always says "my BFF" which was annoying because the audience already knows that. It came off as the author trying to convince the audience that these two characters are best friends without actually building up their relationship at all. Lily as the FMC is just an idiot. The author was clearly trying to write a strong character but failed miserably. Lily gets turned into a vampire on accident and then proceeds to not pay attention or listen to anything Tristan has to say about being a vampire. She just goes around New York like she knows everything. She's rude to everyone. She hates her body so much that it consumes her life. She is incapable of seeing her so called best friend as a person who could have a bad day or have bad shit happen all because she is thin. Like Lily is really out here thinking anyone who is thin has a perfect life, like come on. The sex scenes were so badly written and overshadowed by Lily's internalized fatphobia. She can't fathom Tristan actually liking a plus size woman at all which was insane. She constantly jumped to conclusions that were wrong because she has no critical thinking skills. All of this is also made worse by the author telling not showing through out the book, so much so that it doesn't read as a novel at all. Its more like someone just telling you a really long boring story. There's supposed to be a plot but it's overshadowed by all the fatphobia and negative self talk. The characters are all flat and one dimensional. The overall conflict with the vampire counsel was over in about a minute and really had no effect on the story. Overall this was a terrible read and I would not recommend this to anyone. Especially anyone who is struggling with their own body image. It reads like a boomer wrote a book about a millennial plus size woman but has no idea what it's like to be a millennial or plus sized. So it just comes off as cringy and fatphobic. I regret my life choices that led me to read this.

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addyintheburg's review

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adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

It was a good book, a funny use of the vampire romance trope. It was cute even at times, but I really found the main character’s self doubt to be redundant. As a person on plus size side of things, reading about another’s insecurities, in such a noncommittal way in the middle of the plot, was quite frustrating and didn’t cater to the development of the story.

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celia25's review

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medium-paced

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

4.0

The main character spends a lot of time dealing with her internalised fatphobia and it takes the entire book for her to come to terms with her own body.

I found the way her mother seems to do a sudden 180 on Lily's diets and suddenly just accepts that her daughter is the weight she is a bit odd, after she's spent most of Lily's life trying to get her to diet and lose weight

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thecanadianbookworm's review

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With five mentions of either dieting or fat shaming herself in the first four pages (and one is a half page FFS).. hard pass. 🙄

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bibble_kingly's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This book was a challenging read. The vampire aspects were interesting but I wish there had been more explanations about other things.

I think the Mother's opinion doing a 180 at the end of the book felt incredibly unrealistic. Yes, she experienced a terrifying event. Also, when you spend your child's enitre life fat-shaming her and forcing your daughter to develop disordered eating, it takes a while to not only acknowledge your wrong doing but to also, unlearn all of that AND do better.

This book had a lot of moments of realism which kept it grounded in some aspects. I understand that when a person gets to be 100+ years old, there's probably a disconnect when it comes to the human understanding of the supernatural world but...

'Vampire Hunters are incredibly dangerous so you have to watch out for them BUT ALSO are rare so why would you worry about it?' is very weird especially when Tristan laughes about werewolves existing. Werewolves, the creatures that are the folklore adversaries of vampires?? How was Lily's question not an IMMEDIATE clue that maybe our new couple has a totally different problem from just the Vampire council????

Overall, this book gave me a lot to think about in terms of body acceptance, the facets of internal shame and how all of that impacts everyone around you. The supernatural aspects were interesting but also, kind of baffling. The romance plot was also a bit baffling at times but not terrible.

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