Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

Wendy, Darling by A.C. Wise

10 reviews

_annabanana_'s review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic friendship, Sexism, Mental illness, Misogyny, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Death of parent, Child death, Animal death, Grief, and War

Minor: Physical abuse, Suicide attempt, Self harm, and Cultural appropriation

aea_hobbit's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional 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

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Sexism, and Forced institutionalization

Minor: Bullying, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Child abuse, Colonisation, and Confinement

samanthamoore's review

adventurous dark mysterious slow-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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Kidnapping, and Sexism

Minor: Death of parent

kadtide's review

adventurous emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Gaslighting, Forced institutionalization, Kidnapping, and Child death

Moderate: Grief and Death

Minor: Death of parent, Blood, Racism, War, and Sexism

elena2000rr's review

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

3.5

Very good book with an interesting twist to the story. Well written, although it gets a bit heavy with the constant time jumps and the same repetitives ideas of the brothers' personalities, which makes you feel that the characters don't have much background and they end up a bit flat. It is somewhat slower at first but little by little you get more and more hooked. I recommend it, I especially liked the different experiences of Jane and Wendy and how, despite being mother and daughter, the author makes each one have their own personality.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Medical trauma, Violence, Mental illness, Bullying, Racial slurs, Blood, Emotional abuse, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Sexism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, Animal death, Racism, and Torture

Minor: Injury/Injury detail, Homophobia, and War

willowwastaken's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Child abuse, Child death, Forced institutionalization, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Drug use, Sexism, Gore, Grief, and Gaslighting

Minor: Vomit

abominablesnowaro's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping, Misogyny, Violence, Gaslighting, Bullying, Child death, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, and Animal death

Moderate: Blood, Body horror, Classism, Colonisation, Grief, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Torture, Violence, War, and Xenophobia

anniereads221's review

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

I enjoyed this dark retelling of Peter Pan

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child death, Colonisation, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Grief, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Misogyny, Torture, and Toxic friendship

Minor: War

cereads's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Torture, Sexism, Mental illness, Gaslighting, Forced institutionalization, and Death

booksthatburn's review against another edition

reflective tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.0

WENDY, DARLING is a retelling which takes the original’s commentary on early 1900’s England’s sexist expectations for women and girls and leans into them, examining and contextualizing them rather than merely reproducing them. 

It's tempting to dismiss this version of Wendy as passive, inactive. Not very many things actually happen in one sense, and she spends most of the book not doing things, or talking in circles around the things she did as a child in Neverland long ago. But that rumination, that early passivity is the point, and it forms a sharp contrast with the last quarter of the book where she leaves to rescue her daughter, Jane, stolen by Peter nearly as soon as the book begins. It's about the time stolen from her by sexism and institutionalization, the agency take from her by men who dismissed her as a girl then as a woman, and the way that Peter in his ageless boyhood is an echo and a concentration of the forces that twist every statement of Wendy's into a way she must have been female and therefore mistaken. Wendy doesn't do much in an action sense but she makes the most of every moment she can, talking with Mary as they sew secret pockets into their clothing, plotting ways to get back at her tormenters in the institution. 

Jane's sections feel more robust than the flashbacks to Wendy's time in Neverland, but they're tied together to illustrate Peter's efforts to treat Jane as literally interchangeable with her mother, brought there to be his "mother". He needs her to protect him and make it all better, but to never stand up or point out that his treatment of the other boys (and everyone on the island) oscillates from active abuse to petulant neglect. Because of adult Wendy's thoughts about her daughter we have more context for what Peter is trying to strip away from Jane, it's easier to notice what he's removing. 

The narrative treatment of Mary White Dog in England and Tiger Lily in Neverland attempts to address some of the harm of the original by grounding Indigenous people as real with specific tribes and origins, not just something from Peter's imagination, while also showing how harmful it was to Tiger Lily and the rest of her tribe to be trapped by his whims on the island, discarded when he grew wrathful or bored. There's a contrast drawn between Mary knowing the tribe she's from while having an awareness of how much knowledge she lost by being removed from her homeland, versus how little Tiger Lily can remember since she's trapped in Neverland. Tiger Lily doesn't remember any other name for her tribe. Given Peter's penchant for renaming people, it's probable that "Tiger Lily" isn't even her original name in this version, though it's all we get. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

Moderate: Racism, Sexism, Grief, Kidnapping, Forced institutionalization, Toxic friendship, Domestic abuse, Vomit, Blood, Animal death, Child death, and Death

Minor: Torture and Death of parent