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Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

100 reviews

dayanasdailydish's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
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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mlgilliland's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

I’m so glad that I gave this book another chance. I adored the gothic academia vibes. I love the conversations that were discussed in this book. That is something that Ava Reid does best. She makes the reader feel emotions and women’s wrongs.

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taylorcoonelly's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense 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? It's complicated

4.75

Effie Sayre has always believed in fairytales, and during her first term in college filled with disappointment and cruelty, she continually has trouble distinguishing life's fact and fiction. Her anchor has always been Angharad, an epic fantasy romance written by deceased national hero Emrys Myrddin. In a stroke of good luck, Effie is invited to the Myrddin estate by his son to help restore his crumbling home by the sea. But Hiraeth, crumbling into the sea, holds dark secrets for Effie at every turn, and while uncovering these secrets, she meets literature student Preston Heloury. Preston has come to Hiraeth from the university, but he is determined to coin Myrddin as a fraudulent author with Effie's help. The two begin working together in secret, uncovering the dark and gothic story of a girl, the sea, and monsters lurking beneath crumbling walls.
This is second book I have read by Ava Reid, and I enjoyed this one MUCH more than her previous, Lady Macbeth. Effie is a dynamic main character whose journey throughout the story is incredible, and the enemies-to-lovers arch between her and Preston was sweet and tender and everything I could have hoped for. This book mixed dark academia themes with gothic fantasy/fae elements in a way that was gripping to read. One major thing to note however is that nowhere is it mentioned the sexual advances made towards Effie by several older men of power in the book (not Preston, who is so fierce and protective of Effie and treats her like she matters), and this was something that threw me off a little and I wish I had known going into the story. I love how the author connects Effie's growth with that of the story of Angharad, and the overarching theme of resilience and the power of women's voices. An incredible YA dark academia fantasy - with a second book coming soon!

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kghunter's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense 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? It's complicated

3.0

“[…]the truth was very costly at times. How terrible, to navigate the world without a story to comfort you.”

If you were to remove all of the sentences in this book that described one of the characters blushing, it would probably be about half its current length. I don’t know if this is just a more common experience of fair skinned people or what but I think a group-read of this in which everyone took a shot every time someone blushes would be a pretty fun way to get absolutely shittered with your friends if they also happen to be into horny fantasy mystery novels that involve a lot of quivering and clenched fists.

Blushing and quivering aside this was a truly enjoyable read. Reid is brilliant at capturing the “dark academia” imagery and I loved how she used such a beautifully painted, fantastical storyline to examine themes of misogyny, victim-shaming, childhood trauma, and isolation, as well as gender-based violence, bigotry, and oppression. As a reader who originally chose to read this book to scratch my annually occurring wintertime dark academia itch, its depth and sincerity came as a pleasant surprise.

Content Warnings

vic_to_ria's review against another edition

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medium-paced

3.0

Read the content warnings before reading

This wasn’t bad- just not for me.
I was expecting more folklore based storytelling but it was more allegory based.

I wasn’t getting the folklore- cozy dark academia vibes everyone was talking about and felt like that could have been played into more. It just felt too real to me, like it could have all been chalked up to mental illness rather than magic, and the unreliableness of the main character while interesting at times felt like it needed more focus on the reactions from other characters to balance it all out. Idk

The book did have a strong female empowerment theme all throughout and showed the truly darkest sides of being a girl in any age, not only a one where girls can’t enrol in literary higher education. I think that there should have been a content warning before the book explaining the themes- I read the ebook so maybe the physical did I’m not sure but I feel like I would have liked to know going in it was not going to be a decently fun time like I thought. It just made me sad reading it because everything that was happening could happen in real like in terms of the harassment and sexism-

terrible men do terrible things with it hard being able to trust one after they consistently one by one prove you can’t in fact trust them. This book maybe unknowingly depicted abusive relationships in a clever way with how the plot paralleled the literature they were studying and comparing it to possession.

I think my main problems was that it wasn’t escapist enough for my likings- more fiction with sprinkled folk lore than a true fantasy.
Again maybe I wasn’t in the right headspace or prepared to read it when I did so give it a go after reading some warnings from others to see if it’s a good fit for you.

Content Warnings