Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

Vengeful by V.E. Schwab

40 reviews

thesvnthsense's review against another edition

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

4.0


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cleot's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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heartsallure's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective 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

4.0

girls don’t want boys … girls (me) want victor vale

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rhyslightning's review against another edition

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

5.0

If you’ve already read Addie LaRue, then I can say this one ends leaving a similar taste in your mouth. 

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regaliaofchaos's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • 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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ana_distracted's review against another edition

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I love VE Schwab's darker shade of magic and I liked the first book in this series but this is just too dark.  There is a good story-line, in amongst the story-lines, it seems to be the one that gets the least pages.  Everything else is just dark and violent without any real reason.  Also Schwab likes not just flipping between characters but flipping between times.  Forward, back some times four years ago, sometimes 4 weeks ago, sometimes 2 years ago.  It's annoying.  The story doesn't feel like its moving forward.  Just swirling in gratuitous violence/misery. 

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lizziaha's review against another edition

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dark
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.5

The sheer breadth of this book is very impressive. There are so many moving parts and ve schwab manages to weave them together so intricately. That being said, because there are so many moving parts, there are still some loose threads that I desperately want to pull. I’m not sure if there will ever be another book, but I want one!!!! Part of the reason that these books are so compelling is because they have a very Batman-villainesque feeling to them and there’s not really a hero to hang your hopes on, so you have to decide which of your morals you will set aside as you choose who to root for. 

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megb64's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-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

4.0


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idroplungs's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The majority of the book is not as good as the first. Too many characters being followed and too many moving pieces making it too easy to put down. Stick with it though as the ending is surely worth it since the last 80pages flew by without being able to stop it. Schwab's EOs are an amazing twist on super heroes or super villains, keeping the line blurry is what keeps it interesting.

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jkneebone's review against another edition

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

3.0

I loved the first book in this universe, Vicious, but for some reason Vengeful did not quite live up to my expectations. Picking up five years after the events of Vicious, in Vengeful we find Victor, Mitch, and Sydney still on the move, traveling from place to place as they try to figure out what's wrong with Victor (after his reanimation by Sydney, his power is on the fritz). Meanwhile Eli, after being arrested, was given over to a new program called EON which is dedicated to hunting down and capturing EOs. This book also introduces us to several new characters: Marcella, a mob wife-turned-EO after her cheating husband tried to murder her; and June, an EO with the power to assume the form of any human she has touched, who has been keeping up a secret long-distance friendship with Sydney.

There is a lot happening in this book, and though parts of it were really interesting to me - we finally get some Eli POV and find out more about his history! - there was, for me, a bit too much going on, to the point that I found it a bit hard to know what to focus on. Eli and Victor's obsession with each other continues - Eli has visions of Victor's ghost and suspicions that he isn't dead, and once they're confirmed he wants to rectify that himself; Victor is determined to keep Eli from getting out of EON - but we also have Marcella's quest for vengeance against her husband/subsequent desire to take over the entire Merit mob, and the addition of EON as a source of conflict/potential fear for most of the characters. There's just a lot going on! I didn't find Marcella particularly compelling when contrasted with the other characters, and the sort-of role-reversal of Victor and Eli
-not only is Eli imprisoned while Victor roams free, Victor starts trying to find EOs who might be able to help him, and then killing them when they can't help - he's literally using the system Eli perfected to kill EOs, albeit for a different reason -
didn't make a ton of sense to me; it felt like a re-hashing of the first book in some ways.

It was still a quick and engaging read - although definitely not for those with a sensitivity to violence or graphic images, as there was even more gross and gory stuff happening in this book - but for me, lacked the delicious darkness of the first book. The characters were nasty, but the motivations felt muddied - and maybe that was the point, but whatever it was, it just didn't work for me as much as the first book did.

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