Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - The Witching Hour

Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

13 reviews

willow1113's review against another edition

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dark reflective medium-paced

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

3.25

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aliennas's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No

2.0

It honestly has no business being this long. The “Yes, rape me!” and the pedophilia, incest and other… uncomfortable aspects of the book were big yikes. That being said, the narrative and the plot in itself is really cool. Part 2 is a clear highlight.

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skeptic_hecate's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

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

2.0

It took me forever to finish.

I will start with t he good:
The book is beautifully written, you can tell the author has a great imagination and good story telling. The lore is really well built, quite deep and interesting. The story has a lot of potential.

Now, what I didn't like:
The lore is so interesting, the life and family tree of the Mayfair witches is what kept me reading, too bad is so little and only dealt deeply for a few select chapters. The rest of the book we follow 2 very unlikable protagonists. Rowan, who is so not like other girls with a large pick me energy. Reading Rowan's thoughts only made me dislike her even more. She has this holier-than-thou attitude, she thinks she is smarter and better than everyone in the room, doesn't respect anyone, not even her (supposed) love of her life. She only thinks about sex, how everyone else is beneath her, and how smart she is. She is also very misogynistic, for absolutely no reason too, and towards every woman she encounters, dead or alive.

I can get behind a character like that, if the plot showed us that she is in the wrong. But she never is shown that, she never learns, and she is so boring to read. The second most boring character to read, the most boring character to read is Michael Curry.

I think the author was aiming for the lovable Himbo but forgot the lovable part. Not only is he widly inconsistent (a complete idiot at one point, then smarter the next page and then even more of an idiot the following chapter, only to be again somewhat smart), he is also very boring to read. We are told that he is this brave old-fashioned man who carves his own path, and shown over and over again how cowardly he acts. I wanted to skip all his parts because he is so unbelievably boring.

Aron Lightner is the best character, I love him, I wish there was more of him.

This book drags, this book is so slow, everything happens so slowly and is repeated constantly. I do not need to be spoon fed the same irrelevant information over and over again. There is so much in depth description of the house (which I actually enjoyed the first 2 or 3 times), but it gets stale after the eleventh time.

The book ending is an obvious sequel bait, too rushed, little effort and detail put, Rowan does a complete 180 personality wise. Also, the entire book reeks of the author's internalizedf misogyny. I mean the amount of hat thrown towards women who *gasp* are child free. I only wish she treated incest and rape (prominently present in her book) with the same level of disgust as a woman deciding to be child free (abortion scene and birth scene are so ironic, I cannot believe the author couldn't put two and two together).

Unless you are a die hard Anne Rice fan, don't bother with this book, read the Wikipedia summary and maybe look up a Mayfair witches family tree online and you'll be missing very little.

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