Reviews with content warning for Self harm - A Strange and Stubborn Endurance

The world building and depth of the characters was amazing! Reading this was like watching a well directed movie: all the pieces were there and when they get slotted into place it simply feels right, not cliche or too simple.

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esendis's review

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adventurous emotional inspiring reflective tense 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

4.5

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isxelle's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

3.25

3-3.4
i forgot to make this review so i can't remember my exact rating.

cute romance combined with healing from trauma and an intriguing political murder mystery. i'm grateful for a book club i’m in for making me pick this one up. i probably wouldn’t have otherwise because i don’t usually gravitate towards books with heavier traumatic topics. TW for sexual assault in ch 2. as a result of this life changing event, we follow vel on his road of healing and recovery. cae is such a perfect man. he’s so whipped for vel and i was living for it.

However, with all these different elements i feel that the overall story ended up lacking in some aspects. there’s a whole other 2 countries on this map that barely get mentioned. off the top of my head, i can’t name a single thing about them and that is if they were even mentioned in this book at all.

another aspect of this world is magic. it turned out to be quite an important detail in this book and i feel like we were told rather little about it. i’m surprised that there aren’t any defenses against magic users. it’s against the law to use magic on others without their consent but that’s that. that’s literally it. there’s no defences or anything talked about in this

it’s kind of surprising that the events of this book took place during a little over a week. the escalation was crazy.

i honestly had kind of bad vibes from laecia in the beginning with the way she was saying she’d whip the ralian bruteness out of him. i suppose with ralia’s reputation that was to be expected, but i can’t believe she devolved into madness that fast. maybe she was always like that and had never grown up? cae had mentioned her saying “she deserved it”
in reference to a kid she had got in a fight with and then many years later saying the same thing when killing a groom. she was always getting people to do her dirty work. ALSO what the hell happened to her magical exhaustion. does she just have crazy stamina???? that anad guy said she seemed tired but then a couple hours later she was crushing hearts and frying more nerves. i definitely have a lot of questions.

this part is just be me having a personal ick, but vel is the kind of person who cannot accept a compliment and it pissed me the fuck off at some points. he is so self-deprecating and it was annoying me. yknow those types of people who are like haha i fucking suck lmao. ya that is him.

i liked the beginning and middle more that the last like 100 pages.

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