Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - Black Rose

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Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

anisakajee90's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I love Karina and her writing but why take a character as rich as Rose and sideline her with

her becoming pregnant

it honestly drives me crazy when authors do that. She has been reincarnated time and time again to fine her love and to experience what she missed out on in those lives. Why do that?

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Rather a let down from the first book. I'm tired of FMCs staying with insufferable MMCs and tolerating abusive behavior for their 'potential'. Also, you don't need a pregnancy for a happy ending. It came out of nowhere and didn't fit.

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melissaslibraryy's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Too much smut, not enough plot. While that may not be bad for some (me included sometimes) I thought the premise of the book was pretty good and might’ve been more intriguing then the previous one in the duet, so I was hoping for a stronger plot line and dialed back smutty scenes only to be disappointed (hence the 3 star rating.)

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pinkgiraffe17's review

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challenging dark medium-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

1.75

Extremely jarring body horror/pregnancy/miscarriage horror that really should have been more clearly disclosed at the start of the book. I would strongly advise anyone who has had these experiences to take a closer look at the trigger warnings before starting this book so no one is caught out.

In the acknowledgements at the end of this book, the author talks about how much she struggled to write this sequel and it really shows. Reincarnation stories are never my favourite anyway, because it feels like throwing away the character you just worked so hard to develop. Valtu, our male lead, also felt like a completely different character. His amnesia combined with the reincarnation thing just made it a worse version of the first book as it felt like we rushed through them falling in love and finding each other again. Characters that were prominent in the first book completely disappeared, wasting all the work that was put in to develop them. Along with massive inconsistencies that were missed in editing. The conclusion of the story felt really rushed and like we missed out on the most important part where Rose's family reconnects.

So many threads were completely dropped from the first book - the portals that the book could open, Saara, Bellamy's intentions. Dahliah was a more enjoyable character, as a slightly older protagonist with more life experience. All of that is erased and Rose is basically a bland doormat in this book.

All in all, it's clear Karina Halle really struggled with this story and I'm genuinely not sure if it's worth reading to complete the story arc.

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kelisabeth's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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inkdrinkers's review

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

"I'm someone else's tragedy."

Picking up immediately after the end of Blood Orange, Black Rose follows Rose Harper, a newly turned vampire who has all the memories and emotions associated with her past lives rush into her the moment she turns. It's then she discovers her past with Valtu, who is Dracula and her past lover, and seeks him out to reunite after her past live's death. But fate has intertwined their stories into a tightly woven tapestry, and Valtu is not the same man she once knew.

This is a hard book to rate. It's not as terrible as some of the other reviewer's insist, but it's also in no way as strong as Blood Orange was. I felt like the first in this duet was incredibly powerful, expertly toeing the line of retelling Dracula's well-known story while also weaving in the idea of fated love, witches, demons, and more. Where Blood Orange was gothic and compelling, Black Rose felt more like a journey that didn't know it's ending.

I feel for Karina Halle, the entire book was pushed back and release cancelled when she went through immense grief. These moments in the end of the book where the author's grief comes across on page are some of the strongest writing in Black Rose, but unfortunately it doesn't fit with the other loose plot in the pages. I feel like this sequel struggled with its purpose. Had it just been about reuniting Rose and Valtu, I think it would have been powerful - but throwing in the side plot with Bellamy and Leif felt very confusing and didn't have a satisfying ending. There were massive structuring issues, and glaring continuity errors I found reading 60% onwards which took me out of the story and made finishing this extremely difficult. (It took me three months to read this, but I really wanted to finish it.)

At the end of the day, Blood Orange remains one of my favorite of Halle's books. I think it could have lived without this sequel, but I understand the drive to finish Rose and Valtu's love story. Overall, this is probably closer to a 3-star for me, but again, I really, really found Halle's depiction of grief powerful and well done in the end of this book.

Content Warnings: Sexual content (multiple scenes, including CNC), Death (on page and past), Violence, Child death (in past/nightmares), Blood, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy (epilogue)

Content Warnings