Reviews with content warning for Racism - The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

Reviews tagging 'Racism'

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

171 reviews

bealittlebrave's review against another edition

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challenging emotional medium-paced

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

4.5

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erinbarton's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

going into this book, i knew from the premise that it would share similarities with daisy jones & the six, but the similarities were just too many to avoid comparison — both books follow a fictional band during the 70s, written in the format of an oral history /documentary script, the journalist of which is the child of one of the band members who had an affair with the charismatic and magnetic female lead singer, and the journalist is aiming to unpack the mystery surrounding an infamous performance of the band’s. although opal & nev’s plot definitely moved beyond this going into the second half, it wasn’t enough to escape the comparison for me.

the oral history style i felt was actually to the book’s detriment; i didn’t feel connected to the protagonist, sunny, at all since they were so passive in the story, and none of the characters with the exception of opal had very distinctive voices that i felt warranted the script format. the execution of the script format wasn’t as seamless as daisy jones & the six, possibly due to the large amount of footnotes and editor’s notes from the protagonist. i feel this story could have been better executed in a regular prose format with the inclusion of some footnotes and news articles etc

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arbertram10's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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keeks_'s review against another edition

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dark emotional funny inspiring slow-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

5.0

wow. I did and didn’t expect to enjoy this book as much as I did if that makes sense- I knew the concept would appeal to me but the I could never expect the execution to be as good as it was.
Dawnie did so well in creating so many different characters, scenarios, backstories which felt so real: at points I truly believed that I was reading a story on a real punk group from the 60’s/70’s and that certain events had happened because the writing was excellent. The weaving in of real events into their fiction narrative helped this.

Opal Jewel, what a queen of a character.

This is the first book I’ve read in this format and it worked really well too, plus I’d love to add that the audiobook of this is amazing! I never listen to audiobooks but I saw in reviews that this one was really good so I decided to listen and read at the same time - the audiobook brings a whole other level of immersion to the story, really recommend checking it out if you can.

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ecox180's review against another edition

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informative 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

4.0

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thehmkane's review against another edition

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emotional 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

4.75

It's unfortunate that this book won't be able to avoid comparison to Daisy Jones, because this, to me, is a much more solid journey into that space. Timely, but nostalgic; classic, but modern.

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