Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

486 reviews

adventurous emotional funny mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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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: Yes

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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azurelunatic's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 94%

Finished chapter 39 and further via recap because I was not equal to enduring another one of those torture scenes via audio book 

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adventurous dark medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

There is a concerning amount of sexual assault, drugging and raping in this book once you get to the halfway point. The book was focused too much on muscles instead of giving the love interest a personality, and the mc shakes like a chihuaua in fear every other page, but the story was overall fun until chapter 20.
The mc is told the love interest will have a magic compulsion effecting him for a night that will cause him to rape a woman if there's no one willing around, and that might end up being her, and she gets off on it. There's even undercurrents of furry/omega stuff to top it off. It turned the relationship very toxic very quick. He suddenly starts trying to control the mc and assaults her hours after she was assaulted by other characters. She slaps him, but it's framed as foreplay.
I refuse to read the rest of this series' rape fantasies and domestic abuse. It's not cute or sexy. And I don't want to find out if Tamlin knots. Also, the plot is remeniscent of Beauty And The Beast but in all the ways people who say Belle had stokholm syndrom talk about. There's no "hideous curse" that makes sure her love isn't shallow-just a flimsy masquerade mask, the mc bandages a wound the love interest gets but it isn't in pursuit of protecting her, and he lies to her about pretty much everything in the name of "protecting" her, clearly devaluing her autonomy and trust. Ironic, given every other character in the story does more to protect her than he does. Lucien is the only rounded character, and the only reason worth reading.
Also I'm sorry I cannot get over the answer to the riddle that saves them all is "love" I was rolling my eyes so hard I was worried they'd get stuck.

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

call me basic, the hype was real!!!! a fun read!!!!

i will say feyre is hard to understand as a character, there were some sliiiightly questionable moments of sexuality, the phrase “my bowels turned watery” was used at least three times, some plot constructions were way too convenient, and i have no concept of how much time passed (was it like 2 months or 2 years ???)

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I just don’t get the appeal of these books yet. Aside from it being a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which is fine in and of itself, the story cherry-picks from lots of existing books (Hunger Games is an obvious one) and Feyre is actually kind of annoying. Characters repeatedly warn her to not do the thing, she does the thing anyway, and suffers through the consequences until one of those characters (always male) rescues her. She’s portrayed as a tough sexy Cool Girl badass but actually largely lacks agency and/or uses her agency to do stupid stuff that men have to save her from. And speaking of sexy, there are a few scenes where Feyre is put through sexually degrading situations and those always had an undertone of voyeurism that didn’t sit well with me.

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adventurous challenging dark tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: N/A

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I get the hype. Read this in about 3 days. While the writing wasn’t necessarily the strongest the plot and the characters were so compelling. 

This is an especially great book if you’re looking to get into fantasy . While the world is complex with lots of characters, you’re really eased into the Prythian with Sarah holding your hand a bit a long the way. As a big fantasy reader, I found this a tad patronizing at times, but overall it made this a much easier and fun read. 

I really connected with Freye and her mix of soft and hard, and I’m so glad the damsel in distress trope wasn’t leaned on in this first book.

Literally cannot wait to start the next. Highly recommend. 

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