Reviews tagging 'Kidnapping'

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

115 reviews

sweetchocolatez's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Murder, Physical abuse, Death, Grief, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, and Blood

Moderate: Gore, Gaslighting, Kidnapping, and Suicide

Minor: Pregnancy, Alcohol, and Panic attacks/disorders

shadikb's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

It was good but Scarlett annoyed me, and her seeing emotions in colour, was very confusing as well as annoying too... but a very enjoyable story overall.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Emotional abuse, Stalking, Murder, Kidnapping, Suicide, Death, Self harm, Grief, Violence, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Gaslighting and Abandonment

cas_reads_anything's review against another edition

mysterious slow-paced

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

2.75

This felt like if a CW teen show had one fever dream of a season and then ended with a happy ended & minimal character growth.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Suicide

Moderate: Blood

Minor: Abandonment, Torture, Gaslighting, Kidnapping, and Sexual violence

mysterybindsme's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

2.0

- Definitely intended for a younger reader (probably about 13-15)
- Main character is incredibly naive and has like two personality traits: protecting her sister, and having trust issues. Oh and the third trait of being incredibly quick to trust things she hears despite trust issues
- Becomes way more interesting about 2/3s in (which at that point is a bit late really)
- Far too many plot twists. Like I'm not kidding, past the half way mark the entire situation changes context about five times
- The ending ruined the entire thing. All the stakes were gone and it made me absolutely hate most of the characters (aside from Aiko who was genuinely helpful but there for like five seconds and Scarlett who was just a normal girl in an awful situation)
- Yes I'm planning on reading the next two books (unless the second one's worse). No I would not recommend
- The prose is beautiful tho

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Child abuse, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, and Gaslighting

Minor: Murder, Kidnapping, Sexual assault, and Suicide

alex1's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Murder, Emotional abuse, Child abuse, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, and Grief

psnchz's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Domestic abuse, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Blood, Child abuse, Rape, and Suicide

savvyrosereads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Rating: 4/5 stars

Scarlett and her sister Tella escape their abusive father and plunge into the magical game of Caraval…but when Tella goes missing, Scarlett soon learns everything is not as it seems.

This book took me AGES to read for reasons that are not remotely its fault, so the buddy read very much left me behind (and I can’t blame them). That said, I really enjoyed this one and had a great time discussing it once I was finally able to do so!

The world building here is particularly fun to me—the entire setting felt super trippy and made my brain hurt a bit, but in a good way. This is more complex (and a bit darker) than YA sometimes skews, but I enjoyed both of those things!

A lot of the folks in my buddy read were frustrated by the ending and/or by the character of Tella, but I actually loved both. I’m excited to see where this trilogy goes next (as of this posting I’ve already finished and really enjoyed Legendary but have Finale left to go)!

CW: Kidnapping; physical and emotional abuse; blood/violence/death; suicide 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, Death, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, and Violence

Moderate: Murder

Minor: Torture

aharper's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Child death, Physical abuse, Kidnapping, and Child abuse

Moderate: Abandonment, Forced institutionalization, and Confinement

hiddeninfantasy's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Blood, Physical abuse, Violence, Murder, Self harm, Death, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, Alcohol, and Grief

serenamaya's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Kidnapping, Child abuse, Death, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Murder