Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Malice by Heather Walter

17 reviews

moonlightmelody's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense 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

is it perfect? no but gay ass bitches who love each other in a non-toxic way but are still morally ambiguous for reasons outside of their relationship

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Bullying, Grief, Murder, and Slavery

Moderate: Confinement, Abandonment, Alcohol, Child abuse, and Torture

Minor: War, Physical abuse, and Medical content

ka_ke's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense slow-paced

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

4.0

For a sapphic, n/a novel, Malice does the job. It was a wonderful retelling of a childhood favourite. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying and Child abuse

Moderate: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Grief, Sexual content, and Violence

catmac15's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad medium-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

5.0

One of the best sapphic books I've ever read! The world-building and magic systems were so well done. This book was also 500+ pages and I finished it in less than 3 days (that's pretty quick for me, especially with school) and I couldn't put it down, especially the last 100 or so pages really were the selling point of the book for me. The author did such a good job of taking a story we all know so well (Sleeping Beauty) and giving a whole new spin to it. One thing about retellings is that there's a chance that they would be too predictable because we know the original story and we might end up with a copy-and-paste situation but Malice is the complete opposite. I look forward to the release of the 2nd book!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood

Moderate: Violence, Toxic friendship, Sexual content, Grief, Gore, Forced institutionalization, Bullying, Blood, and Abandonment

Minor: Genocide, War, and Misogyny

cameronreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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? No

4.0

I really enjoyed this! It was definitely one of the most interesting retellings I've ever read - I loved how it twisted the source material, staying true to it but also being its own original story. I loved how the plot progressed - there was one major plot point that I guessed very early on, but there was plenty of twists I wasn't expecting! The story itself was really interesting and I was completely engaged throughout the book. I loved the take on villainy it presented and I found I adored reading from the villain's perspective, especially because sometimes I find the typical hero's morals get in the way some times which really annoys me, and that absolutely wasn't the case here. The main character Alyce was great and progressed so much as the story went on as well, and I really really loved the romance and the pacing of it. I loved the ending so so much, it was exactly what I wanted to happen!
However, I did have a couple of issues: there was a little bit of info dumping, not enough that it was hard to read or boring but just took me out of it a little; there was that one character centred plot twist that was painfully obvious and could have been less so; there were quite a lot of time skips and training montages, which isn't a major problem just something I'm not a big fan of; and there were a couple of instances where Alyce assumed what Aurora was thinking and made mistakes, which does annoy me. Overall though, I did really like this book and would one hundred percent recommend, and I'm waiting in anticipation for the sequel!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Death, Murder, and Violence

Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, Drug abuse, and Lesbophobia

Minor: Death of parent, Gore, Grief, and Torture

foreverinastory's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense 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

4.5

 4.5/5 RTC

Well. Damn. This was incredible!!

Rep: sapphic half-vila MC, possibly suffers from PTSD, sapphic love interest, queer-normative world for MLM and WLW couples (sadly still very driven by the gender binary).

CWs: Blood, bullying, death, gaslighting/manipulation, lesbophobia/general queerphobia for royals, misogyny, murder, violence, child abuse, drug use/abuse by side character, grief, slavery/extortion of Graces, torture, xenophobia towards Vila and Fae. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Bullying, Gaslighting, Lesbophobia, Misogyny, Murder, Violence, and Death

Moderate: Child abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Grief, Slavery, Torture, and Xenophobia

make_believer's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Homophobia, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Sexual content

nonbinarylibrarianwitch's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: Child abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Grief, Murder, Physical abuse, Torture, and Violence