Reviews - A Botanical Daughter

1.58k reviews for:

A Botanical Daughter

Noah Medlock

3.68 AVERAGE

hannahesabal's review

4.0

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-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

carcinokattastic's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark funny mysterious sad tense 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

alleelei's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous dark medium-paced

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

We all love a story set in Victorian England with queer and gay characters, but that is no excuse to overtly use the words "queer"/"gay" with all their meanings in what feels like every single chapter. We get it.

That being said, I really loved the concept of the book: A Frankensteinian experiment with interesting botanical & biological procedures, the found family trope and some ethic discussions formed the most intriguing parts of the story.

Now to the disappointing aspects: Even though it's marketed as horror, I felt it was lacking these tense, goosebump inducing moments. The scenes with gruesome actions didn't make me metaphorically jump or surprised me much, and I wished for more tension and suspense.

What bothered me the most, perhaps, was the ambivalent, somewhat not linear characterisations, especially with regard to their relationship to the botanical daughter. I know, character development and such, but especially the portrayal of Gregor felt too ambiguous, at times rushed, and then again he's back to being stuck on the same opinion he had at the very beginning, which all made me quite dislike him. I feel like the author lost his grip on Gregor as much as Gregor lost his grip on the experiment.

And the ending was not satisfying, the girls (and frankly, Simon too) deserved better tbh, let them get away from that toxic mad scientist

bujo_planbee's review against another edition

2.75

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense 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

teafrog's review against another edition

5.0

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

foxybuddha's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

A rare 5 ⭐️ for me. Maybe 4.9 because of 1 scene that was a bit ridiculous. Still I enjoyed the setting, the vocabulary, the plot, the interaction between characters.