Reviews with content warning for Kidnapping - The Shadow Cabinet

the underlying premise of magic continues to be transmisogynistic. why? why is it necessary to require the entire existence of the world to be based on transmisogyny??? 🤬

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keya_caivalur's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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hobbithopeful's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad 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

5.0

Thank you Penguin for this ARC
This book tore my heart out and then served it back to me on a silver platter. What's worse is that I loved every second of it!
Dawson perfectly captures what's like to experience life as a woman, it feels like she reaches into my brain and puts my darkest experiences to page. Part of the reason this trilogy is so difficult to read is because how close to real life it is. All the hate, fear, and bitterness isn't fictional. The only thing fictional about this book is the magic and witchery. Everything else sadly, you can easily find anywhere in the world.
This is in no way shape or form a light and happy read. There is sisterhood, family, and love, but what they all go through and experience is difficult at best, depressing at worst. Definitely check your tws before reading because there is a lot of death, murder, homophobia, sexism and more fun stuff.
I was so ready to hate Ciara, everything we learned in the last book really had her painted as "evil" plain and simple. If there's anything I should have learned from Dawson's writing, is that people are messy, complex, floundering creatures. There is no good or evil, only the choices we make, and we can always come back from it. ‘No. There’s always a way back,’ he said, trying to convince them both. ‘You just . . . turn around and go the way you came.’
My favorite pov is from Leonie, she is such a badass and I loved her adventure. On the flip side I always have such a hard time enjoying reading Elle's chapters. She just really annoys me and the way she behaves would drive me to therapy if I were her child. I didn't expect Luke's plotline to take him where it did, I enjoyed it, but it almost feels like too much out of left field.
Another MUST READ from Juno Dawson, this is shaping up to be one of my favorite series! Please I need the final book! DAWSON LOVES CLIFFHANGERS TOO MUCH!!

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aseel_reads's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny reflective medium-paced

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

4.25

For the first part of the book, I was very confused about the plot but I was here for the vibes! Using witches to talk about sexism, racism, transpobia etc is a sure fire way to make me love a book. But as it kept going, I saw the plot unfolding and I'm super keen to see where this series goes and I hope it's a long one!

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foxwish's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

2.0

This was definitely a step down from book 1 for me, I was disappointed. I hoped Ciara would make for a compelling POV read, but I preferred Niamh and missed the found family vibes of Elle, Holly, Niamh, Theo and Luke from the first book.

We get Theo, Chinara and Luke POVs here. I liked Theo's a lot, but found Luke's so boring that I started skipping his POVs when they came up (except for the very last one).

You can really feel the loss of the characters who died in the last book. I found it difficult to care about the characters or the plotlines, Ciara's one was okay, but Leonie's was boring, Theo's was just to set up the cliffhanger and Elle's was for shock value.

Hale took a dive from a potentially interesting villain in book 1 to a generic evil-doer that is hard to take seriously in this book.

I do think my main issue is Ciara. I don't know what to make of her. She has a lot going on mentally, yet I feel like she lacks depth and she isn't compelling to read. Also she

rapes Luke multiple times (he thinks she is Niamh) and that is treated as okay within the narrative.

I disliked her immensely and hated how Dawson seemingly wants the reader to root for her despite all the reprehensible things she does.

I felt like I had a good grasp on how the magic works in book 1, but there were points where I was incredibly confused by it in this book.

I've completely lost interest in this series and will not be reading the third book when it comes out.

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questingnotcoasting's review

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adventurous dark 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

4.0

Her Majesty's Royal Coven is one of my favourite reads of 2023 so far so I was extremely excited to read this one. I listened to the audiobook again because I love Nicola Coughlan's narration. She does a wide range of accents perfectly and the different character POVs feel so distinct. I think I preferred HMRC a tiny bit more because the main characters were more often in the same place at the same time but this was still great. Dawson continues to include social commentary within her urban fantasy world, this time mainly through the introduction of the witchfinders. They made me absolutely furious and this was just as tense as the first one, mainly because of them. The ending of the first one was an interesting choice and I wasn't sure I'd enjoy the repercussions of it but actually I found it a really clever and interesting direction to take the story in. I was prepared for another cliffhanger ending but I couldn't predict what it would be. I slightly regret reading this one so soon after its release because now I have to wait at least a year for the next one.

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