Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

13 reviews

irinalast's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring tense medium-paced

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

5.0

An interesting and complicated world is created through several perspectives; setting is established through ‘show don’t tell.’ Great writing that establishes realistic character feelings and dialogue.  

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Content Warnings

Minor: Physical abuse, Racism, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, War, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Fire/Fire injury

litliz's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful 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: Blood, Classism, Death of parent, Grief, Religious bigotry, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Body horror, Child abuse, Antisemitism, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Confinement, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Violence

ru_bunny's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective 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? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Emotional abuse, Domestic abuse, Bullying, Death of parent, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Death, Toxic relationship, Miscarriage, Child abuse, and Child death

Minor: Fire/Fire injury

elzibub's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Antisemitism, Misogyny, Kidnapping, Sexism, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Violence, and Homophobia

readwithde's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring tense 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? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, and Misogyny

Moderate: Miscarriage, Antisemitism, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Torture, Violence, Blood, Classism, Alcohol, Child abuse, Alcoholism, and War

Minor: Gaslighting, Kidnapping, Gore, and Confinement

maeverose's review against another edition

slow-paced

3.0

TL;DR: I’m sad because I really liked some aspects of this and it had the potential to be a favorite, but it needed to be shorter, have less povs, and have the romance not be toxic, and then make it a little more of a focus. I also don’t care for the gratuitous violence…

The toxic romances. First I should say that this isn’t a romance book. I went into this with the expectations of it being a fantasy romance and it’s definitely not. That’s my bad, I thought I’d heard people talk about it as if it was. There’s only a tiny tiny bit of romance at the very end, but the way the two male love interests treat their eventual partners is incredibly toxic. I made some lists to illustrate the point (spoilers, obviously & tw for rape and sa):

The Staryk king threatened to kill Miryem if she didn’t complete his tasks, threatened to kill her family, forced her to marry him, was physically aggressive with her, nearly raped her, trapped her in her room with no food or water for a day, used her to lengthen winter in turn harming people from her world, generally treated her like shit, it’s also made clear that his people killed and raped innocent people in the sunlit world for centuries, and he had no problem with it. Mirnatius scared Irina as a child by leaving her dead squirrels, clearly had no issues with the demon trying to kill her, touched her sexually without her consent and might’ve raped her if she hadn’t stopped him, generally treated her like shit

And it’s so sad because both of those relationships could have been really fun if they hadn’t been horrible to each other. I love a good enemies to lovers but this is not how you do it.

Gratuitous violence. Mostly from Wendy and Stepon’s povs, where they had to bring up at every opportunity that their father abused them. It felt like the author was just throwing it in there to keep the book feeling dark and gritty but there was no real purpose to it. We already know from the first few chapters that their father is a despicable human being, it didn’t need to be mentioned repeatedly every single time it switched to one of their povs.

The multiple povs. I only cared about Miryem’s and Irina’s a little bit towards the second half of the book. However I wouldn’t say the others were unnecessary (well, Magreta’s maybe) or couldn’t be interesting to other readers. I felt that it was usually pretty clear who’s pov it was right away, but the book does switch povs multiple times in every chapter, so it could get annoying.

Bad autism rep? I wanted to talk about one of the perspectives in particular: Wanda’s younger brother Stepon. His narrative voice is especially different from the others and I can’t tell if it’s just supposed to be that he’s young, abused and had a very isolated upbringing, or if he’s autistic coded. He has sensory issues with noise too, which could be a trauma response from his abuse, I’m not sure, but it felt like an attempt at a very stereotypical representation of autism, and if it was I don’t like that. It’s a very narrow minded interpretation of autism, not to mention it was just so tedious to read.

It’s overwritten. It definitely could’ve (should’ve, imo) been at least 100 pages shorter. Maybe its just because I wasn’t enjoying it that much but it felt like a drag to get through. I was bored for a lot of it.

The writing. Her style just doesn’t work for me. I liked the winter descriptions, and the folktale style of it, but I found certain sentences to be worded awkwardly to where I’d have to read them multiple times to get what she meant. It was the same with Uprooted for me. Like she’s trying to make it sound pretty but it’s just awkward to read. Could just be me. I did find some sentences that were actually grammatically incorrect though…

Homophobic?? This one was easy to miss, but the only - very minor side character - that’s gay has a crush on his own cousin. I feel like I don’t need to explain how that’s problematic.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, Gore, Physical abuse, Vomit, Child abuse, and Misogyny

Moderate: Alcohol, Animal death, Domestic abuse, Antisemitism, Blood, Death of parent, Alcoholism, Body horror, Rape, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Classism, Incest, and Miscarriage

Graphic: Eye trauma Moderate: mentioned child rape

naomi_k's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Torture, Physical abuse, Violence, Antisemitism, Child abuse, Alcoholism, Religious bigotry, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Misogyny, Confinement, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Cursing, Classism, Animal death, Death of parent, and Miscarriage

kaziaroo's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

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

2.5

 I’ll begin by admitting I was disappointed in this book because I was hoping it would be like Uprooted (by the same author), which I enjoyed a few years ago, and given the rave reviews I was sure I’d enjoy it even though the blurb didn’t sound very interesting to me. And in the first half, I was optimistic; it was nothing like Uprooted, but I still held out hope that I could enjoy it because it was well written if a bit slow. My attention was wandering, but I was sure that as the plot progressed and I got more into it I’d be more interested. 

Unfortunately, the second half was only worse. By the time I was two thirds of the way through, I was thoroughly bored and couldn’t wait for it to end. I didn’t warm (pardon the pun) to any of the characters, and by the end I was sick of them. Unlike most reviewers, I enjoyed the unlabelled point of view (POV) transitions – that is, until the number of POVs kept increasing and I was dragged back to the perspective of side characters who had no reason to have so much time in the spotlight. None of the character relationships were convincing or fleshed out enough to be interesting, and the characters themselves were unlikeable. It seemed like no matter whose perspective was next, I was still disappointed. 

I also want to mention some more serious flaws in this book (avoiding spoilers as much as I can). This book tries very hard to make certain characters forgivable, even for horrible sins, making their sins not only forgiven but also forgotten as if they never did anything wrong. This makes the ending very uncomfortable as the author clearly wants you to believe that the characters will live happily ever after, but there’s just no precedent for this. Characters who hated each other (for good reason) throughout the book suddenly love each other with no build-up, further shattering any remaining suspension of disbelief. Everything is tidied up into a neat happy ending with no negative consequences, even when they are justly deserved. This left me feeling sour and unsatisfied. 

Despite this, I gave Spinning Silver three stars because it was still well written on a sentence level and the characters had distinctive voices (although I did forget who was talking halfway through a chapter once or twice, so maybe not always!), and the first half was decent. There were some nice domestic scenes which, while they slowed the book down, I found enjoyable to sink into. I’m now teetering between 2 and 3 stars, so who knows, maybe I’ll go back and edit this later after thinking further. On the other hand, I feel like I've spent more than enough time with this book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Antisemitism, Blood, Child abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Ableism, Child death, Animal death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Sexism

Minor: Sexual assault, Rape, Sexual content, and Sexual harassment

jennifer_bush_73's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

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

3.0

⭐️⭐️⭐️=it was fine. 
This was a good story, and, overall, I liked it. It was more fairytale than fantasy. But the poor grammar and mechanics were a distraction from story. The story got bogged down in too much detail. A good editor could have made the story more readable by cutting the redundant details and correcting the grammar errors.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Child abuse, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Violence, Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Murder

Moderate: Alcohol, Child abuse, Death of parent, Death, Emotional abuse, Grief, Murder, Physical abuse, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Rape, Domestic abuse, Genocide, and Murder

Fantasy

apworden's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

I really hate the ending. Otherwise, fantastic.

both leads end up staying in the toxic marriages and it is played as romantic and happy

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Domestic abuse, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, and Toxic relationship