Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

The Diviners by Libba Bray

16 reviews

hardbackhoarder's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Racism, Gore, Body horror, Abandonment, Sexual harassment, Blood, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Religious bigotry, Fire/Fire injury, Death, Child death, Toxic relationship, Suicide, and Murder

Moderate: Slavery, Grief, Death of parent, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Ableism, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Drug abuse, Terminal illness, Abortion, Sexual violence, Racial slurs, Police brutality, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Vomit, Confinement, Deportation, Xenophobia, Colonisation, Rape, Cannibalism, and Homophobia

annakh16's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

A fun book that I got through surprisingly quickly. Great audio narration and great storytelling.  

I really appreciated the diversity of settings and characters, and learning about their struggles. It greatly strengthened  the historical element of the story for me. 

The characters themselves were lovable - well, mostly. Evie had me po-si-tutely annoyed sometimes, but she grew on me, and I also think her behaviour is actually realistic for a teenager in her position, which was refreshing. (But yes: too much slang. I agree with everyone on this). 
I also absolutely loved the different friend/sibling/family dynamics. Theta/Henry and Memphis/Isaiah have my heart.

I do think it was a shame that Mable was kind of dropped 3/4 through the story. It didn’t make sense, and I also just liked following her pov. Hope this gets remedied in the next book.

 

Regarding the ending,

I did think the final fight was surprisingly quick. It felt a bit anticlimactic.

Regarding the romance,

is it really meant to be romance? I think it’s very clear Jericho likes Evie. I think it’s also clear she just sees him as a distraction, with a bit of shared scary experiences/teenage horniness to sort the sexual tension. Will be interesting to see how this develops. Definitely think we have a love triangle incoming.

 

Overall a fun read. Almost too spooky for me. But looking forward to the next book. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Animal cruelty, Sexual assault, Suicide, Animal death, Grief, War, Abortion, and Racism

guessgreenleaf's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious 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

Moderate: Death, Blood, Cannibalism, Classism, Racism, Alcoholism, Animal death, Violence, Child death, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Murder, Grief, Suicide, and Sexual assault

cady_sass's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

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

3.5

Oh man, here’s another one where I may get decimated by the booktube / booktok girlies. I was SO INTO this for the first 70%. This is a long ass book and I think I read that chunk in like 2-3 days. Then….. we lost the plot. I could not stay interested or engaged. It goes from plausibly supernatural in a fun way to completely off the wall unbelievable bonkers in a way that I simply can not keep up with what’s happening. I borrowed the audiobook to try to help myself just power through the last quarter of the book and it did not help. It took me 2 weeks to get through the last quarter and I just … idk, it’s not satisfying. I’m still confused. I want to reread it and see if its better/makes more sense the second time around, but also absolutely not because this book is SO long?! The internal struggle is real. 

I think I’m not the right audience. Is this something that could make sense to someone else who enjoys a more deeply fantastical story? Probably. Am I that person? Absolutely not. I am a light fantasy type bitch and i thought you had me, but then you lost me.  Rip my brain cells 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism, Violence, Abortion, Racism, Animal death, Sexual assault, Body horror, Bullying, Murder, Abandonment, Blood, Misogyny, Alcohol, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Gore, and Fire/Fire injury

amariela02's review

adventurous mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore

Moderate: Racism, Sexism, Murder, Kidnapping, Sexual assault, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Homophobia, Death, Abortion, Animal death, and Domestic abuse

christy_mitten'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? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Murder, and Sexual assault

grbookworm1818's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.25

This book is a good start to a great series.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder and Sexual assault

Moderate: Homophobia

satin's review

adventurous dark funny mysterious fast-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? It's complicated

5.0

OMG. this book was “posi-tute-ly” perfect. I loved the characters and how all of their stories intertwined, and the plot was so mysterious, dark, and always kept me on my toes. I read this book as a physical copy and i have SO many annotations in it. Overall, i highly recommend this if you’re in the mood for a spooky read with a lively cast of characters. definitely continuing with the series, im excited to learn more about these characters.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder

Moderate: Sexual assault and Racial slurs

ellanarose's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious 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? It's complicated

5.0

Started off more focused on world and character building, but once the plot began this really livened up. Excellent book

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Alcohol, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Hate crime, Murder, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Violence

r1dh4's review

adventurous dark informative 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? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

For the time that I read The Diviners, I was almost completely transported into its world. The setting really came off the page for me, and I really enjoyed the author's writing style. I will say that Libba Bray seems to really like long-winded descriptions and discussions; however, I did not find it boring here and instead thought it was important in order to fully visualize the world she is trying to show. That being said, I feel like it's important to know this and have the right mindset going in, because I definitely wouldn't have been able to read this so quickly or deeply had I read it earlier last year since I wouldn't have had enough focus at the time.

The characters were also all really well-developed in my opinion. Even minor characters that did not show up for very long felt like real people. At times it did feel like there was just a lot of information on the character's backstory coming in at once, but considering the rest of Bray's writing style it didn't feel that out of place to me and it didn't hinder my enjoyment of the book at all.

Additionally, the plot doesn't really pick up speed until about halfway through the book. However, even though the plot started a bit later, I still enjoyed the beginning because it provided some good exposition and allowed the reader to become familiar with the characters and their motives/personalities. When the plot actually does get underway, I found myself really wanting to know what happened next. Not only does the book feel rightly creepy, but there's a lot of movement between places and characters that was handled well and prevented me from feeling bored.

Along with this, the story itself also felt really well-crafted; you could tell the author had taken a long time to research and write this book, and you could see the carefully laid threads that allowed this book to finish completely while still leaving some great material for the next few books. The only thing I didn't like about this book was the romances; each felt either forced or too fast. I feel like some extra development would help this out, which I'm looking forward to seeing in the next few books.

Honestly, since I've heard that the subsequent books are better than the first, I definitely will be reading the next few, and I'm looking forward to continuing the series! I would also recommend this book to anybody, as long as they feel up to the longer page length and have checked out the content warnings (because there are quite a few). Overall, a great book to start off 2022!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder

Moderate: Alcohol, Blood, Body horror, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Grief, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, and Sexism

Minor: Sexual assault