Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Exciting Times

Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

48 reviews

liviamello's review against another edition

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emotional 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

4.0

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james1star's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

2.25

I desperately wanted to love this book. The themes, setting, plot and writing style drew me in. But mostly it’s comparison and likeness to Sally Rooney, whom I adore, is what really made me want to read this. But alas… I kinda hated it. I don’t want to go on too long as this I already feel has taken up too much of my time enough but Yhh.

Plot: Irish postgrad Ava teaches rich kids English in Hong Kong, has relationship with a rich banker who buys her stuff and she questions it, he leaves for a bit she she becomes infatuated with a woman, they have a relationship and that’s all you’re getting… read one the spoiler reviews for more.

What I liked: there were definitely some memorable quotes and snippets and impactful parts. The writing is ‘good’ and for the most part understandable, with somewhat lyrical or at least complex (I’m not that good at explaining) descriptions of things. It did have some witty and interesting takes in parts that made me LOL. The book also deals with quite a lot of topics e.g. class, relationships, power dynamics, sexuality, minor alludes to racism (I’ll develop in a sec) among others which is good but I personally don’t feel they were dealt with the best but Yhh… I dunno.

What I didn’t like: as it’s in my head now I’ll talk about this first but I don’t think the bi/pan(/ I don’t know what to ‘label’ Ava because she doesn’t and of course we don’t need to but Yhh someone who has an intimate relationship with people of multiple genders) rep is not the best because Ava is ‘cheating’ on her partners and this is a big stereotype of the bi community sooo. Also racism can be alluded to like the way Edith’s mum treats the probably southeast Asian helper where in Hong Kong this inter-Asian racism is a big problem and Dolan mentions it very slightly but doesn’t extrapolate. Furthermore, many of the Asian characters fit stereotypes like the children Ava teachers being typical-Asian-Tiger-kids-who-don’t-really-want-to-learn-English-but-are-made-to and are described as ‘copycats’ - Edith also fits this persona and her mum being a typical Asian tiger mum.

Next paragraph for the characters. I honestly didn’t like any of them and not in an ‘intriguing villain’ kinda way but more so ‘I could not care less if you do or don’t get what you want’ kinda way. They weren’t really developed and shown to be quite shallow with certain characteristics being repeated too much - Julian’s bankerness, richness, Oxford-graduateness, whiteness and so on… he’s also just not very nice. Ava too is just very meh and Edith, albeit the best, is also just okay bordering on nice but like I dunno I can’t really elaborate without lying. And being a character based novel you do need to have this level of complexity or lovableness to keep wanting to read on but I did not - I really didn’t enjoy reading this book it felt like I was being forced to.

Final point, the writing in this book makes Sally Rooney look subtle… and to me that says A LOT. I definitely got this ‘I’m flexing my English degree’ ‘I know lots of big, complex, intellectual words and I don’t care if you don’t also know them’ and ‘imma confuse these readers’ kinda vibe - I went off on one a bit and lost my train of thought but yhhh it’s pretentious. And this isn’t always a bad thing if you have the big brain energy vibe but I don’t really, at least not to Naoise Dolan’s extent. Furthermore I felt it had the pretentious and ‘gobly-goop’ writing style like Rooney on the various topics (with big discussions on arguably benign things but are important in the moment and to individuals and Yhh but not on the larger scale… my brain always fuzzes trying to sum up this type of writing) but without the real cusp or direct meaningfulness that has the lasting impact on you.

I could honestly talk a lot about this book so maybe it’s not that bad but… I still don’t like it. Okayish plot with some takeaways but predominantly unlikable characters in a pretentious writing style and some harmful stereotypes.

P.S. the plot was just like ehhh with lots of ‘why are you doing that?’ ‘Really? People talk and act like that? Really? Ummmm I have differing opinions’ and the logicality is questionable at some points too.

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antoniav's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective slow-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

4.25

Content Warnings

jocelynlee113's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

5.0

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hello_lovely13's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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lydiavsbooks's review against another edition

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funny reflective fast-paced

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

3.75

I see why this is often compared to Sally Rooney's writing, with its real, complex characters and matter of fact tone narrating the every day life of our main character it definitely shares similarities with Rooney.

That said, it is unique in its own way. One thing that stood out to me was the humour throughout, this book was funny, and I think its rare that I think that. I've also seen the writing being compared to Ottessa Moshfegh, which i also see where that comes from, but overall I think Dolan has her own unique voice and style that will definitely work really well for some people.

Did it work for me? I honestly don't know haha. I definitely found it very readable, I was intrigued and to some extent attached, but I think books like this will just click on that extra level with some people and not others, and I can't say it necessarily did for me.

That said, I still really did like this, I found reading from a female character who was just unapologeticly human, without trying to convince you shes a 'good' person very refreshing. I also wanted to note a few favourite quotes:

'You keep describing yourself as a uniquely damaged person, when a lot of it is completely normal. I think you want to feel special - which is fair, who doesn't - but you don't allow yourself to feel special in a good way, so you tell yourself you're especially bad'

'I enjoyed conversations where I wasn't trying to persuade anyone, where I just said precisely what I thought. I got tired of making myself acceptable'

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coreysbooks's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
⭐️⭐️/5 for me

Main character doesn’t get a lot of character development, a love triangle between our bisexual main character and her male roomie banker and a female lovely lawyer. Our main character is kind of cruel, she blatantly used both people, and then goes back to the banker in the end. She’s dishonest, and uses the people she “loves”. I think the only reason I finished is I loved the voice of the audiobook narrator.

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hollymileham's review against another edition

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reflective 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

such a good book with the most amazing writing, theres nothing i love more than a bit of character focused literary fiction
it helps even more that it had such good sally rooney vibes 💕💕💕

Content Warnings

nzmerchant's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

girlgetsbook's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

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

3.25

I didn't love it as I thought I would, because it has a lot of themes I either relate to or am interested by, however I didn't enjoy the character's voice so much and almost DNFd it, it felt tiring at times especially in part I, it felt like it was the same scene over and over and the same topics, though important, being driven to the ground by being mentioned in every sentence. Part II saved it for me and all the stars here are exclusively because that part exists, still I was already tired and wanting to finish it as quickly as possible by that time.

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