Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

Sistersong by Lucy Holland

34 reviews

stormmorgan's review against another edition

mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Transphobia

Moderate: Death and Pregnancy

mostlyvoidpartiallystars's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.75

A beautiful, heartbreaking, but inspiring book. The worldbuilding is rich. I love the combination of magical realism & historical fiction, it felt seamlessly woven in. I appreciated the strong anti-colonial themes. The disability representation is decent - I started out hesitant over how it was being handled, but I loved the progression. 

Finally, a recurring section I'm going to be adding to all my reviews going forward: Do they bury their gays?

No. The only queer/queer adjacent characters are a trans man, a bigender person, and the trans man's girlfriend, who isn't queer herself, but is part of a queer romance given her boyfriend is trans. None of these characters die, and no queer romances end tragically

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child abuse, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, Sexual content, Murder, Ableism, War, Transphobia, Deadnaming, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Rape, Pregnancy, Kidnapping, and Physical abuse

zghutcheson01's review against another edition

adventurous emotional fast-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

4.5

While I wasn't really interested in Riva or Sinne in the first 150 pages, by the middle and throughout the end all of the siblings had compelling stories and beautiful character arcs. I eas very wary when I recognized the Aurthurian references but it seems to be more references and I wouldn't call it an Arthurian story. I also was very familiar with the ballad "The Twa Sisters" before reading and I think it gave the whole thing a much more tragic lens considering the first few chapters bear little to no resemblance to the song.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Transphobia, Death of parent, Child death, Pregnancy, Grief, Death, and Sexual content

Moderate: Biphobia, Physical abuse, Ableism, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and Religious bigotry

poetsofsweetpea's review against another edition

adventurous tense 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

4.5

I enjoyed listening to this book. It had an interesting magic system and I liked the contrast between it and religion.  There were three distinct voices in the siblings whose perspectives the story was told.   There were a few technical snafus in the audio version and editing and not narration was to blame.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Adult/minor relationship, Medical trauma, Grief, Religious bigotry, Injury/Injury detail, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Murder

tashtasher's review

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, War, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Death of parent, Medical content, and Transphobia

Minor: Chronic illness, Murder, Body shaming, Pregnancy, Sexism, Medical trauma, and Misogyny

kalmia31's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry and Transphobia

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Pregnancy, Body shaming, Suicide attempt, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Dysphoria, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Ableism, War, Animal death, and Deadnaming

lady_moon's review against another edition

challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Rep: trans masc MC, bigender side character

To be honest I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the path each sibling had. S was annoying for the better part of the book but she didn't deserve this sort of ending. Riva started out well, I liked her in the beginning. And then came Tristan 😐 After they got together, Riva became insufferable. Her whole ending was definitely not what I wanted it to be. 
K was fine the whole time <3 In the beginning he was less interesting the his sisters but as the novel progressed, he was honestly the only POV character who hadn't annoyed the hell out of me. 

I'm not a fan of

siblings torn apart

kind of stories. I really didn't enjoy that. The author tried very hard to leave each of them in some sort of hopeful note but for me it's not hopeful when

sibling relationships are destroyed in such a way

.

I didn't quite get the ending with K. Like,

so he's immortal now? He had lived through the centuries? Or it was just him after many decades?

Anyway, I have certain opinions (obviously) but I'm really not feeling that strongly about any of that for it to matter to me. I'm happy how stuff turned out for K (I guess?) and that's the most important thing. Historical fiction with trans characters will never be not fun. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Deadnaming, Transphobia, and War

Moderate: Pregnancy, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Confinement, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury

catherinedsharp's review against another edition

adventurous inspiring sad slow-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

3.75

Beautiful text that wasn’t what I expected! With twists at every corner, characters you can’t decide whether to love or hate and a beautiful plot with magic, religion, war and a well written trans story.

Would recommend.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Dysphoria, Death, War, Blood, Deadnaming, Pregnancy, Religious bigotry, Sexual content, Transphobia, and Fire/Fire injury

becksusername's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Colonisation, Deadnaming, Ableism, Animal death, Blood, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Pregnancy, Sexism, Transphobia, and War

shcleveland's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

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

3.75

My feelings about this book are complicated.

At first, I had a really hard time caring about Riva and Sinne. In particular, I found Sinne's sections grating. Up to about the 60% mark, I was wishing Keyne was an only child. As the plot picked up, however, the importance of Riva and Sinne's threads became more apparent. I had an inkling about the big plot twist early on, but the author managed to have me going back and forth second-guessing my assumptions. If I were just rating on plot and characters, the book would be a solid 4.5 stars. However...

There were so many details about the historical setting that I found confusing or just made me want to beat my head against a wall. "WHAT YEAR IS IT????"' was a question I found myself asking constantly. Based on the ash falling from the sky I'm GUESSING that we're looking at 536 CE and boy or boy does that lead me to more questions about the state of affairs as far as the Christianization of these pagan cultures goes. The Romano-Britons probably would have been mainly Christian at that point if I remember correctly.

Which brings me to the paganism of the book. I couldn't tell if the author was going for syncretism, or just pulling the names of pagan gods out of a hat. Some of the West Saxon enemies might have been worshiping Woden, but probably not these Brythonic-speaking celts? The festivals mentioned also looked suspiciously like the Wiccan Wheel of the Year. The Old English Eostre was used in place of Ostara at least, but... the author is clearly aware that it was the Saxons that spoke Old English since there's straight up OE dialogue for them in the book. It's more likely they would have worshipped Eostre? I have questions.

There's also a reference to Lammas, which is again Middle English though it comes from the Old English for "loaf mass" a term that I don't think even the West Saxons would have been using in 536? I'm pretty sure there's a Welsh harvest festival that would have made more sense.

Anyway, the religion and linguistics were just a distracting mess.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death of parent, Gore, Transphobia, Violence, Religious bigotry, and Sexism

Minor: Pregnancy and War