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Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

132 reviews

allisonsmith120's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

4.0


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chi__'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad fast-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? Yes

3.75


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emmmysue's review

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mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0


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bibliomania_express's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid intertwines magic and folklore with a quest to discover the true identity of an author. This is a book with an interesting premise that tackles hard topics like sexual assault, misogyny, and the erasure of women, but suffers from awkward worldbuilding, a bit too much on-page sexual harrassment, and a lacklustre romance. 

I've been avoiding reviews of this book and the little I haven't been able to avoid has been vehemently negative. I'm more on the ambivalent side. I think the book is doing some interesting things with its drowning motif and exploring mental health and the repression of women. It's depicting the casual sexual harrassment women are faced with that society expects them not to react to. 

But. The literal only good male character is the main love interest. Who, while a fine character, seems to be the love interest only because he's the only person not sexually harrassing Effy and because this is a "romantasy" when it didn't need to be. The sexism is so pervasive that the triumphant ending seems a bit too good to be true.

My real gripe beyond the ever-present misogyny that made this hard to read is that the magic system and worldbuilding is all over the place. I had a hard time understanding what was accepted existing magic and what was just "local supersition", especially when the supersitions were maybe (?) having an effect on a literal real war. But also there was nothing about the book that felt like it was taking place in a country currently at war, even when the main setting was a university town on the border with the enemy country.

I think I've ended with a 2.5 stars mainly because it was fast-paced and interesting enough to keep me engaging and blasting through it, but the list of gripes is too long to warrant a 3.

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muchadoaboutliz's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-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

4.5


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jessversteeg's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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

4.0

“Haunting and tender” one author said of this book on the back jacket cover. I agree. 

It’s a weird, gothic book that crosses over university life and fairy folklore (or is it folklore?). It could easily be made into a thriller movie released at Halloween. It’s creepy and tender, but also quite sad.

A huge theme in the book is both the treatment of women and the ways women are perceived. There are a few pretty awful quotes about how women are either seductresses or submissive, how they’re unable to produce any real intellectual work etc. It also becomes clear early on in the book that the main character was taken advantage of by her academic advisor, and she basically has severe anxiety/ptsd over it. Her anxiety about her life experiences makes her wonder if she’s crazy or not, many people tell her she’s crazy and making stuff up.  The story juxtaposes folk monsters with real life sketchy men. It’s about fighting back against abusers. 

I doubt I’ll read it again, but I’m sure I’ll think about it a lot in the future. I kinda think it should be high school required reading so teens can learn about power dynamics and consent, believing women, etc. 

Here’s a quote from the end that gutted me: 

“I know I beat him in the end, but for so many years all I could do was run and hide. I just sat there and let the water pour in around me. I didn’t know that I could fight back. I didn’t know how to do anything but wait to drown.” 

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melissalivanos's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-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? No

4.75


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moonchild_cos's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-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

4.25


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kemikemi's review against another edition

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dark mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.0

Regardless of however the book was marketed, to me this book is a mysterious and anxious character study inside a dark academia fantasy setting. The focus on higher education research and the Llyrian literary world, with exerpts from books, poems, and academic  articles from within Llyr at the start of each chapter, reminded me of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett—another book I enjoyed that created additional academic lore to immerse the reader in the culture it was creating and further the themes of the novel. Angharad, as well as Myrddin’s poems, were written so beautifully and I wish they were released on their own so that we could read them in full; Ava Reid did such a good job with the setting of Hiraeth, its location within
the Bottom Hundred, and with the overall character that was the sea.

This book was also a fascinating character study, and no matter how many other people call her bland I will stand by Effy as a character. The beginning was a little hard to get through because her perspective was giving me so much secondhand anxiety; the description of her thoughts and feelings were so visceral and yet she also spoke in vagues, so that you could not clearly grasp what exactly was haunting her so. Once she began to reveal her past, however, it all slowly clicked into place, and from the moment she said it I knew in my heart it was all real. It’s a bit of a tale as old as time, a young woman who is experienced no one believing her for so long that she begins to doubt her own senses and sanity. Don’t get me wrong, I was very invested in the mystery behind Angharad and wanted to see what the truth would unfold to be, the most of all I wanted to know if Effy would ever get to experience realizing and proving that herself as right in her own personal story. I also don’t understand how people don’t see the romance in this story, because I very much did; it was tender and rooted in someone caring for and believing in you. Especially with the blatant juxtaposition of very masculine older men trying to tell Effy who she was and what she needed, her relationship with a same-aged peer and quiet academic felt very precious to me and I enjoyed every minute they were on-page together. 

My main critique would have to be the way the events of the book unfolded from the climax to the end; when considering the pace of the rest of the novel, it did feel very fast and like so much information was suddenly dumped on us.
I did feel very vindicated, having guessed from the moment Preston said he didn’t think Angharad was written by Emrys Myrddin it was written by his widow, although initially, I was a bit too optimistic like Effie and thought that it was going to be a love story where women weren’t allowed to publish novels and so one man who loved his wife so much published it for her so that he could prove to her that her writing could and would be beloved by the entire land. The reality is so much more bleak, but in a world where sexism is so ingrained, a story about common men being commonly greedy and cruel more realistic than a fantastic love about a man who rose above basic misogyny.
However, this complaint does not ruin my enjoyment for the book as a whole, and thus I rate it four stars. I had a great time diving into this world, and I also have to thank Saskia Maarleveld for her fantastic narrating of the audiobook; I especially loved how she did Preston’s voice, and I think her voice lilting across all the Llyrian and Argantian words and accented voices really elevated the experience for me. 

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witcheep'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? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I can see why so many people have enjoyed this book, but to me, it is a miss.

This is very dark story due to the worldbuilding! The world the characters live in is very misogynistic, and the main characters find it hard to fight against, which made the reading experience very uncomfortable – as it should. However, the plot didn't offer enough either mystery or romance, so besides uncomfortable, the book was also boring. The hints towards the mystery made the ending too predictable.

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