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4.57 AVERAGE
4.57 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Alcohol
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Domestic abuse
Minor: Cancer, Death, Miscarriage
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
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
Estella was one of my first fictional loves (don't psychoanalyse me), so I knew I was going to like this one. Especially since it's contemporary gothic with toxic, dysfunctional, imperfect characters. At 600 pages long, it definitely could have been condensed at points, but it was fast-paced and didn't lull at any point.
I wish the topic of queerness was engaged with a bit more in the latter half of the book and I do wish there were more women involved in the story, but overall I really enjoyed it.
I wish the topic of queerness was engaged with a bit more in the latter half of the book and I do wish there were more women involved in the story, but overall I really enjoyed it.
I know I said I was going to wait and come back to finish this book, but I didn’t want the words of an inconsiderate author to be hanging over me at such a difficult time of year, so I read through what was painful with the necessary support in place if I needed it - something I would have been able to do from the offset if this author had listed the content warnings in their book. Instead they relied on a hyperlink…in an ebook that I was reading on a kindle with a notoriously bad web browser. I don’t even have an old kindle and it’s unreliable at best, impossible at worst to get the web browser to work. I just found that to be so irresponsible, especially because the precursor to clicking the link for more detail on the content warning only alludes to issues of a sexual nature:
“The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic content and themes of an adult nature. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older”
Miscarriage, stillbirth and the loss of a child does not only happen to people older than 18, neither does grooming or child sex abuse . Yet these were not hinted at and I’d say are hugely triggering situations. You can’t assume everyone has read Great Expectations either and use that as an excuse for not listing these - I certainly haven’t read any so-called classics unless it was school/uni compulsory reading. Try putting yourself in the shoes of someone who has experienced either miscarriage, stillbirth or child loss and then getting to 30% of a book and being slapped in the face with it when you have no clue it’s coming. And yes, there are differences between miscarriage, stillbirth and child loss - if you don’t know them and want to, message me, there isn’t a question I won’t answer. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who has been groomed and abused and then have it appear from nowhere…. It honestly put me off this author and I don’t want to read anymore of their books.
Sure I could have just DNF’d the book, but by that point I was already a third of the way through and invested in knowing what would happen and I really loved the character of Jude. The coming of age aspect of this book was really interesting to me and had me hooked, until a trauma bomb was essentially thrown at me. It’s not easy to offend me either and I’m not overly sensitive, but I just can’t get over the way this was approached. It was such a shitty way to treat your readers. If you consider the content warning to be a spoiler to the story, list them in the book but put a page before to let people know the content warnings are there and may spoil it. The reader can choose to skip them completely, or skim over them looking for their particular trigger - something I do with every book because I only have two triggers, but they’re huge ones.
Another unpopular opinion probably, but I hated Caspien the whole way through, even at the end. It romanticised choosing money over love, and he put Jude through way too much for me to believe he cared about him at all, let alone loved him. Throwing money at something doesn’t mean you love someone, and coming back at the end of the book to say that everything Jude suffered through for over a decade was because he loved him… fuck off with that bullshit! But Jude just accepted the way Cas treated him and he sabotaged his own life when he refused to move on, so by the end I didn’t like Jude either. My honest thought was that he seriously needed some counselling to work on self-esteem and self-worth.
If I remove all of the stuff I hated, and just focus on the story, then yes, I liked it and I felt an emotional bond to Jude throughout his journey from teenage boy to adult man. I cried a lot for him throughout his story, but ultimately I had no respect for him and I didn’t think they should be together. I’m also sure that my opinion on them wouldn’t change if there had been adequate trigger warnings either, but I probably would have rated it 4 stars rather than 3.
“The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic content and themes of an adult nature. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older”
Miscarriage, stillbirth and the loss of a child does not only happen to people older than 18, neither does grooming or child sex abuse . Yet these were not hinted at and I’d say are hugely triggering situations. You can’t assume everyone has read Great Expectations either and use that as an excuse for not listing these - I certainly haven’t read any so-called classics unless it was school/uni compulsory reading. Try putting yourself in the shoes of someone who has experienced either miscarriage, stillbirth or child loss and then getting to 30% of a book and being slapped in the face with it when you have no clue it’s coming. And yes, there are differences between miscarriage, stillbirth and child loss - if you don’t know them and want to, message me, there isn’t a question I won’t answer. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who has been groomed and abused and then have it appear from nowhere…. It honestly put me off this author and I don’t want to read anymore of their books.
Sure I could have just DNF’d the book, but by that point I was already a third of the way through and invested in knowing what would happen and I really loved the character of Jude. The coming of age aspect of this book was really interesting to me and had me hooked, until a trauma bomb was essentially thrown at me. It’s not easy to offend me either and I’m not overly sensitive, but I just can’t get over the way this was approached. It was such a shitty way to treat your readers. If you consider the content warning to be a spoiler to the story, list them in the book but put a page before to let people know the content warnings are there and may spoil it. The reader can choose to skip them completely, or skim over them looking for their particular trigger - something I do with every book because I only have two triggers, but they’re huge ones.
Another unpopular opinion probably, but I hated Caspien the whole way through, even at the end. It romanticised choosing money over love, and he put Jude through way too much for me to believe he cared about him at all, let alone loved him. Throwing money at something doesn’t mean you love someone, and coming back at the end of the book to say that everything Jude suffered through for over a decade was because he loved him… fuck off with that bullshit! But Jude just accepted the way Cas treated him and he sabotaged his own life when he refused to move on, so by the end I didn’t like Jude either. My honest thought was that he seriously needed some counselling to work on self-esteem and self-worth.
If I remove all of the stuff I hated, and just focus on the story, then yes, I liked it and I felt an emotional bond to Jude throughout his journey from teenage boy to adult man. I cried a lot for him throughout his story, but ultimately I had no respect for him and I didn’t think they should be together. I’m also sure that my opinion on them wouldn’t change if there had been adequate trigger warnings either, but I probably would have rated it 4 stars rather than 3.
emotional
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
One of the best audiobooks I’ve ever listened to!!
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
slow-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
Cas and Judds story is gut wrenching and beautiful all in the same breath.
challenging
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“I’d love him in spite of everything he was and everything I knew he could be. No matter what he did, no matter how much he hurt me, in this I would be constant. As long as Caspien Deveraux breathed, I would love him.”
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐