Reviews - Tess of the Road

You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

1.06k reviews for:

Tess of the Road

Rachel Hartman

4.0 AVERAGE

evenfootnotes's review

4.5

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful medium-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

mollyxmiller's review

4.0

You can find my review at my blog, The Book Dragon:
https://bookhoardingfiend.blogspot.com/2019/04/review-tess-of-road-by-rachel-hartman.html

sarahjonewt's review

DNF'd at about 100 pages. A well-written book with beautiful prose, but the MC didn't really grab me and it's taking quite a while to get to the main plot for my tastes.

peytiebear's review

3.0

adventurous challenging dark sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I really like Rachel Hartman's world-building, character creations, and overall storytelling prowess, but man...this book started off what I can only call grim and bleak. Now, I was listening to the audiobook, so that might have been part of the problem. Maybe reading it oneself is a better experience. But I really had to force myself to keep reading, and the only reason I did is because I really hate not finishing books.

That being said, it is a very good book. It's just really frustrating at first because the protagonist is so lost in toxic and chaotic behavior that it's painful to read and you can't really connect with her until much later in the book, because you have no idea at first why she's acting the way she is or why you should like her. Maybe that's part of why the book is structured that way, to make you examine your own first impressions later...again, it's really well done, I just found it hard to get through the first half that had such a dark, jaded, angry, cynical worldview.

Content Warnings

sashahc's review

5.0

adventurous dark hopeful 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: Yes

Just finished “Tess of the Road” by Rachel Hartman (at 2am. Oops) Such a book. Layered and complex. It’s about leaving home and trauma and forgiveness and friendship and learning who you are and experiencing the sublime and changing your own narrative. And there are dragons.

ETA: not a cozy read, but a satisfying one.

roseybot's review

5.0

So I read this book without reading the second book in the Seraphina series, DESPITE THE FACT THAT I WANT TO, and not knowing how closely linked the books would be (Tess, being Seraphina's SISTER after all).

Anyways, probably a mistake, but it's fine, right? Rachel Hartman remains an AWESOME Author in this book, and it was a deeply emotional and fun ride to take with Tess. I would have been fine with this as a stand alone, but it's not, so I'm excited for book two! Here's to hoping I don't forget to read it like the other Seraphina book >_>

mpchiz's review

5.0

adventurous emotional inspiring mysterious sad

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

library_of_noxx's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging dark emotional medium-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

Content Warnings

emilyreadingbooks's review

3.75

slow-paced

neek_v2's review

5.0

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective 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

More...