Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Just One Damned Thing After Another

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

80 reviews

asinglebird's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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mdpenguin's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I had pretty much expected this to be a bit of a knockoff of Connie Willis' Oxford Time Travel series. It does have a couple of the more clever conceits from it, but Taylor definitely deserves credit for making it into its own thing. That said, a lot about it fell flat for me.

The overall story was good and there was some good adventure, but the characters were so poorly drawn and the in-story pacing wasn't clear. I'm not entirely sure how long of a period of time is covered in this book: the writing makes it feel like a year but certain lines in it suggest four or five or more. The characters, similarly, weren't clear. They'd get described as having such and such personality traits and then we'd never really see it. Mostly they were all pretty flat and sometimes they just didn't seem coherent. Sadly, that includes the protagonist and her love interest: the romance wasn't at all believable to me and even if it was, I just couldn't care because the characters were just plot devices. I'd shrug and say that it was just more plot-driven than I normally like but we're put in positions where we really are supposed to care about the characters and I just never felt it.

Overall, it's better than fair in as far as it's an entertaining novel playing with some entertaining ideas. If it didn't strive to be any more than that and maybe ended a little earlier in the story or let people be friends instead of lovers then I'd probably have a higher regard for it.

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sapphicsoilscientist's review against another edition

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slow-paced

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

2.75

It was okay. I came across it to find something similar to Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. The idea is similar, but the execution is very different. It was difficult to keep all the characters straight (I still don't know if the MC is actually called Lucy?) I found the constant failure rather boring, and the interesting back characters were not given as much screen time as the somewhat boring (but snarky) MC. The baddies were very predictable, which was a little bit of a shame and the ending didn't make a great deal of sense. Dinosaurs were lovely. Do heed content warnings.

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cj13's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny fast-paced

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

4.5

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ekcd_'s review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

0.5

Finished it out of spite because i have been DNFing quite frequently. Its all spoilers and rants I will not be tagging, proceed at own risk.

1. Fucking hate first person narratives that try to write purple prose. People do not have thoughts the way Taylor thinks her narrator does. Max also seems very smug and pleased with herself and her humor, its kinda icky. Especially when she rags on other characters hubris.

2. Characters are completely underdeveloped and replaceable. The entire book could have been written with a cast of 10 and instead it had 30. After awhile I stopped consulting the cast section at the beginning of the book because I realized not only did I not care but it truly did not matter which character did what because it was all just about moving the plot forward and centering Max at all times. Literally no other plot point was every made with another character, every single thing was directly tied to her. So obnoxious only seeing the story from one persons - very limited - point of view. She didn't even have an empathy or wondered about others experiences. Just all about her in her head and how the whole of St Marys revolves around her constantly. Main Character Syndrome and I mean that in the most derogatory way possible.

3. Completely out of character development. And not in a "he wouldnt say that" way but in a truly is this person secretly multiple personalities way. Chief barging into Max's room and accusing her of adultery? And then fine two pages later? Absolutely makes no sense narrative and makes their relationship seem weak and unstable (while Max clearly thinks they are soul mates)

4. Jodi Taylor claiming historical accuracy can eat my entire ass. I dont even like history and i know more about the time periods that some of this book took place in.

5. The sex scenes??? Literal wtf moment. Aggressive, harsh, fast, out of place, crass. This wasn't smut it wasn't erotica it wasnt even porn. Crashing the bosses car and then having sex on the hood so aggressively that people notice when they get back? To quote "if this had been one of those books there would have been 3 pages of head banging sex" -- this right after Max and Chief fall asleep after being almost killed. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN. Literally gibberish.

6. Speaking of sex, Sussmans bizarre sexual assault scene and then never mentioned again. What was the narrative point of having Sussman stick his dick in Max face? To prove she can beat someone else? Already done many times by her inflating her own fighting skills. To reinforce how bad he is? Taylor is just using nonsensical, out of left field sexual assault to make a character as bad. Do better. This is Outlander levels of "plot is stale so lets add some rape to move it along."

7. She lost a baby? She was pregnant? She had a cold and went to the clinic? Literal word salad. I was laughing on the bus because I thought I was having a stroke trying to understand what the fuck the author was trying to do with this story.

8. Casual, constant alcoholism, but clearly Jodi Taylor has never had a sip in her entire life. Max would go from black out drunk to writing a 100 page proposal in the same night. She also clearly was written to have an alcohol dependency but literally no one brought it up. This did not age well and Taylors lack of even basic understanding of this instantly pulled me from the story

In short, what an obnoxious, self-important I-am-so-quirky story. Probably the worst book I read all year and I've read a lot of shitty ones. So. Fucking. Weird.

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ariel_bloomer's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

I wound up loving this book. It was a fast paced adventure… perhaps too quickly paced towards the end where so many things are happening and A HA! Moments are coming amid so much other action at the end that I several times had to stop and rewind to catch the important pieces. And almost did the whole last 2 chapters over again. So I wish the whole climax had been a bit easier to follow.

There is nothing subtle about this book. I loved the obvious, almost cheeky, foreshadowing. I found this book through a “readers also liked” section for Garth Nix’s Lefthanded Booksellers book series series, and I think would be a great fit for anyone who loved Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series.

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skyggsja's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

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

2.75

TLDR: cool idea for a story but amateur writing style made me roll my eyes quite often unfortunately.

I was intrigued by the summary and topics in this book and though I usually don‘t read sci-fi this book promised to be a fun, light sci-fi x fantasy read. throughout the first third of the book i was quite into it and thought the idea of a secret history organization that could time travel was quite a remarkable idea with huge possibilities and i was quite enjoying myself while reading.
throughout the last third of the book i was often rolling my eyes into the back of my head on some occasions.

The only way I could endure reading this book is by actually imagining it played out in my head like a netflix series because that‘s what reading this felt like: A mix between the diary videos that the woman names Grace takes in Avatar by James Cameron, and Gossip Girl.
It‘s super fast paced. People die and it‘s described in 3 sentences and maybe one more on the next page. They travel back in time, with a really interesting task, and it‘s story for 15% of the book and a couple of references in the last third of the book. It really feels like they‘re shooting a netflix show and told the main actress „put yourself in the situation then write down what happens and what your character might think. And make it funny.“

Sometimes there was a situation going on and half a page later there‘s suddenly something else going on. It feels a bit amateur-ish to me. Also the entire plot- In this book she gets her Job at the history department, trains to be a „historian“ who travel back in time, and they travel to the Dinosaurs. Something crazy happens which also involves her work partner, after the end of the mission it‘s revealed that something deeper had been going on in the background and she presents 360°holographic images from millions of years ago… oh and there‘s a rescue mission. This could have been Book 1. Make it 500+ pages, craft the characters well and get someone professional to read it over. I would‘ve bought it, it would‘ve been such a cool story.
Instead this is just the first 70% of the book and then she the discovers something crazy, then within 2 hours or 2 months (no idea cuz this book doesn‘t do well with time either. which is funny because it‘s about time ) they work out her plans and then they go on another crazy mission…which would‘ve been a cool plot for another 400+ page book, nice with many details and new characters and all. But ok, cram it into the last 28% of book 1.

I just cannot help but think about the plot as something like a season. The book as it is in the hands of a good Netflix SHow producer would make a pretty rad show, I‘m not gonna lie. For me personally it just doesn‘t work well as a book that‘s meant to be read and enjoyed.

Some characters feel super shallow. The main character isn‘t the worst but I also didn‘t really like her. it feels a bit ridiculous how on the one hand she seems to be a walking catastrophe, everything she touches goes wrong - and on the other hand she’s of course the only one who’s able to think deeper, spots the connections, encounters the right coincidences that end up in groundbreaking discoveries… and she’s the biggest hero as well. the guy she ends up with - naturally he‘s pretty much perfect. He cares. He cries. He asks her the right questions. He has a hard life story and he‘s also great in bed - a stallion indeed - and after they first do it there‘s no end to sexual innuendos. Yay, not personally a fan of that. And then they have that really bad bitch that nobody likes. There‘s not much more to her, she‘s just greatly disliked, will go out of her way to ruin everyone‘s day (especially, of course, the main character‘s day) and they have somewhat of a life-or-death showdown in the middle of an actual showdown with explosions and all that follows right after another showdown. there are a lot of showdowns, a lot of things also go wrong all of the time and it the end all of this got a bit boring.

I got confused with the names as well because there are quite a lot of people. In the end I just went with it and accepted that I‘ll just have no idea who‘s who. Funny though, up until I was like 72% through the book I remembered the main characters first name.

The way this book was written made it difficult for me to read it - in several ways. the language is very colloquial and i (who‘s not an english native but understands english fine enough and reads mostly english books) didn‘t understand some of the stuff that was going on, except by reading between the lies and guessing what the author meant.

The sentences are really short, short sentence follows on short sentence, follows on another short sentence. I know this from American stories and it can sometimes be funny. I remember that in the first third of the book I did find it funny in places but later on I was just like gurlll… pls write normal, i beg you.
it‘s funny when it‘s done in the right places, you know. Not almost all throughout the book ugh.

These short sentences plus the ever present ironic or sarcastic remarks really made some points of the story rather ridiculous. Sometimes in a good way, most times in a bad way, unfortunately.
The conflicts also often felt quite ridiculous. Sometimes the plot even feels ridiculous. For example when a bomb of literal shit explodes. Might work in some stories but in this one I just thought…bro why.

Oh and in the very end it turns out somebody might literally be a Muse, daughter of Zeus???? like, how random???? idk idkkkk what??
to be fair, it was a thought the main character had and she was a bit funky in the head at that moment but it was neither completely confirmed nor denied…

I‘m a little disappointed because I had fairly high hopes. I might actually read book 2 in the future, because i‘m a little curious on what they‘ll see next but if I don‘t read on it won‘t be a loss either.

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