Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Τρεις γυναίκες by Lisa Taddeo

113 reviews

quills4days's review against another edition

inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Bullying, Child abuse, Cursing, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Grief, and Death of parent

giulia_bis's review against another edition

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Vomit, Car accident, and Death of parent

Moderate: Sexism

Minor: Alcoholism, Cancer, Misogyny, and Religious bigotry

lookingforwonder's review against another edition

challenging emotional medium-paced

3.0

This book tells the true stories of three women and how sexual desire played into their lives. What it is that gave them their particular desires, from the families to their ages to their history with trauma, and how they reacted to others finding out about their sex lives, and how others reacted to them.

Maggie has the strongest narrative. Her teacher groomed her and "corrupted" her at 17 years old, and six years later she reports the crime. It is the narrative the book starts and ends with, and definitely has the most haunting result of all of them. This story breaks down what we may logically think a grooming situation would be like isn't the way we think it would be. How her abuser, Aaron Knodel (and that is his real name), was able to get away with it. How he took a vulnerable young woman's craving for love and belonging to sate himself and break her down.

Lina is a 30-something year old woman whose husband no longer even touches her. She separates from her husband and has an affair with her a high school ex-boyfriend. In my opinion, this was the weakest of the three women's stories. Perhaps because Taddeo did not see the conclusion of their relationship. Her chapters are mostly descriptive sex scenes and while there is definitely the complicated dynamic she has with this ex-boyfriend, it wasn't anything revealing or particularly important, imo. The one interesting insight came at the very end, in the epilogue, and only lasted a paragraph.

Sloane is a woman who is married and desired greatly by her husband, and part of their sex life is letting other men and women into their bed. Sloane grew up wealthy and beautiful, and married a chef. In the beginning, it was the same type of story you'd expect--societal pressure of a pretty, privileged white woman. Her part was also the smallest, which made me wonder why she was included in the first place. But at the end, other details pull together that link Sloane's early family life with her life with her husband now, and how their preferences impact others around them.

The descriptive writing in this book in probably its strongest point. Even in Lina's chapters, which were generally the least interesting to me, the details are enough to savor and really understand and see the point of view of each of these three women's stories.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Eating disorder, and Sexual content

Moderate: Sexual assault, Suicide, and Death of parent

Minor: Car accident

erinbarton's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Child abuse and Sexual assault

Minor: Eating disorder, Suicide, and Death of parent

elise_allberry's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Eating disorder, Misogyny, Sexism, and Sexual content

Moderate: Infidelity, Mental illness, Grief, Gaslighting, and Abandonment

Minor: Drug use, Suicide, Car accident, Death of parent, and Alcohol

sammantha's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Death, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Grief, Car accident, and Death of parent

Minor: Animal death

sarahhj's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Suicide

Moderate: Alcoholism, Body shaming, Cancer, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Car accident, and Death of parent

notyourgrandmothersbookclub's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual content, Grief, and Death of parent

amkclaes's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective fast-paced

3.5

honestly, i really enjoyed the first half of this book and ripped through it. i was really interested in hearing about the emotional development of these women, and how they got to where they were, i feel like Taddeo is really good at drawing a quick portrait of someone by picking out a few evocative details and i found it an enjoyable way to learn about the characters.

then it started to lag. by the end i was hardly interested in any of the stories, to be honest, there was a lot of repetition and it got a bit lazy..

add to that that it was a totally white, just barely almost totally heterosexual account of desire and love.. it's interesting because I'm also reading Sister Outsider, and in Lorde's "Open letter to Mary Daly," she is totally uncompromising on one point: if you accept that women other than cis straight white women are part of womanhood, any account that excludes the others cannot be considered an account of women's anything. so to sell this as an account of women's desire, and then include such limited perspective, is disappointing. Taddeo has a pretty good grip on class dynamics which adds to the analysis, but otherwise it's pretty bland.

finally, there are parts that are literally softcore porn.. which doesn't offend me, but i guess i have trouble taking it seriously.. and for me it didn't really add to a "female gaze" or whatever most of the time. Sloane to me had the most dominance over the gaze during her sex scenes, the rest you could be getting from anyone's perspective really.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Eating disorder, Death of parent, and Alcohol

nialiversuch's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Cancer, Child abuse, Cursing, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Car accident, Death of parent, Alcohol, and Dysphoria

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Vomit, and Toxic friendship