Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

5 reviews

teganbeesebooks's review against another edition

challenging informative sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Incest, Infertility, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Alcohol, Classism, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Gaslighting, Medical trauma, Murder, Suicide, Pedophilia, Alcoholism, Medical content, Violence, Death, Domestic abuse, Grief, Vomit, Infidelity, Abortion, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, and Slavery

dev921's review

funny informative slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Sexual assault, Colonisation, Rape, Slavery, Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Classism, Medical trauma, Abandonment, Kidnapping, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Suicide, War, Drug use, Grief, Infidelity, Abortion, Blood, Death, Death of parent, and Infertility

hmetwade's review

emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Gore, Medical content, Abortion, Misogyny, Pregnancy, and Sexism

Minor: Alcoholism, Blood, Death, Classism, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Slavery, Addiction, Child death, and Sexual content

caseythereader's review

emotional funny informative sad slow-paced

3.75

Thanks to Hachette for the free advance copy of this book.

 - MADAME RESTELL tells the life story of an important historical figure I had no knowledge of before reading this book. Restell was a self-taught abortionist in the 1800s, and was loudly public about it and about the need for this kind of care.
- Wright tells this story with dry humor and sarcasm, and delights in Restell's over the top antics.
- It's both fascinating and saddening to see how rhetoric around and social acceptance of abortion has both changed greatly since the 1840s and also how it's stayed very much the same. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, Medical content, Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Suicide, Blood, Drug use, Gore, Abortion, Grief, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Miscarriage, Hate crime, and Sexual violence

Minor: Incest and Infidelity

heather_freshparchment's review

challenging dark informative medium-paced

5.0

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This book is truly incredible. It's a hard read, but it's such a necessary read, especially now. Wright not only tells the story of an incredible woman, but also pulls in a lot of the history that influenced Madame Restell's career over the years. The parallels in the swings from liberal to conservative morality over the nineteenth-century are scarily in-line with our current swings. The Know-Nothing party is frighteningly similar to current alt-right politicians and groups. The epilogue is a gut-punch of a plea for level-headedness and consideration in the aftermath of the overturn of Roe v Wade. Wright gets deeply personal in that epilogue to prove her point, which is both great support for her argument and incredibly brave of her. I had to put this down at times because it made me so angry that not a lot seems to have changed for women, but that's why this book is such a necessary read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion, Blood, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Racism, Alcoholism, Classism, Death, Rape, Child abuse, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Medical content, Sexism, Xenophobia, and Suicide

Minor: Pedophilia, Infertility, War, Incest, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, and Forced institutionalization