Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Something Fabulous

Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall

21 reviews

sage_alexandra's review

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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withlivjones's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

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

3.75

Very fun, very silly, with some moments of really beautiful writing filled with tender romance and yearning.

The main couple’s romance was very sweet and while it isn’t exactly slow-burn, I’m glad that it still takes time for the conflict between them to be resolved after the initial getting together. Valentine is a very relatable protagonist in his struggle to balance his duty and his own preferences - I’m sure he’s somewhere on the aroace spectrum.

I did find Arabella somewhat infuriating but given that the story is told from Valentine’s point of view this is unsurprising. Peggy definitely deserves better, since she’s apparently the only character with more than one brain cell.

This is a book full of queer joy, and I had a lot of fun reading it.

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hobbithopeful's review

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

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

4.25

A ridiculously joyous queer read, with the most dramatic characters ever to exist in literature history. A grumpy Duke who would rather be in bed or lounging about and a sunshine personified twin who is set on rescuing his twin sister makes for a hilarious read. The twins were so silly I couldn't help but love them, I don't even know where to begin with this book, other then at nowhere in the story did I predict what would happen next.
Favorite Moments: Jealous Valentine, Valentine being tied to a chair, Bonny
Least Favorite: Belle doesn't learn

Don't go into this expecting a serious book, I think the most apt word I would use is campy. It is clear this book was a delight for Alexis Hall to write, for it is just as whimsical as it is warm.

I recommend this book, though the characters might not be for everyone.

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analenegrace's review against another edition

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adventurous funny fast-paced

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

3.75

Alexis Hall's characters are silly and a bit frustrating, yet I have read almost everything he has written. Bonny and Valentine were quite fun and enjoyable. Hall makes the modern language and historical context work, and his ability to write out homophobia almost entirely in a historical context, simply by making every character gay, is always fun.

Looking forward to the sequel!

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jjjreads's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring fast-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

5.0

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galleytrot's review against another edition

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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

3.75

READ: Mar 2023

FORMAT: Digital

BRIEF SUMMARY:

In this historical fiction/romance set in 1800s England, Valentine (the Duke of Malvern) feels he’s upholding his father’s wishes by asking Arabella for her hand in marriage. When it turns out she’s not as thrilled by the idea as he’d anticipated, her twin brother Bonny drags Valentine along on a chase from Surrey to Dover in an attempt to intercept the runaway fiancée on her flight to the Americas. The twins are both far more of a handful than Valentine ever could have imagined, and Bonny opens Valentine's eyes to a world he had no idea was even possible.

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 4 / 5⭐

Boy, what an adventure. This book’s got everything: carriage chases; daring escapes; duels; kidnappings; torrid affairs; battles of wit; bees galore; a pair of devoted fanfiction authors; and, a rather surprising amount of peach feasting.

I’ve got to hand it to Valentine. For all that he is quick to lose his temper and is doing his best to live a quiet, comfortable life out of the eye of scrutiny and controversy, he sure does stick to it when I would have turned away and washed my hands of the entire situation. Before Bonny could even get him out of the house, the twins had completely exhausted my social meter and left me thinking, “Nope, time to go home.” I lost count of how many events in their grand adventure I though would be the straw to break the camel’s back. But they just kept on going.

This book is an absolute cartoon of a historical fiction. Nearly every character is a caricature, all of them over-the-top. Most are theatrical and thriving on the adventure. A small handful are just along for the ride. Peggy might be the only sane character. I like Peggy.

TECHNICAL / PRODUCTION: 3.5 / 5⭐
I’ll be honest, I’m more inclined to categorize this ‘historical fiction’ as a fantasy instead. Hall notes at the beginning of the book that linguistic liberties are taken, and just about everyone in the book is queer. This is not an exaggeration. Valentine leaves his comfortable world that operates precisely as one would expect a gray-and-drab-1800’s-England to operate, and he stumbles into this explosive, colorful, high-octane alternate reality that shakes the foundation of everything he thought he knew to be true.

This book was both exhausting and frustrating to my poor little comfortable, introverted mind. I didn’t dislike it, but I did need to take a lot of breathers. My own patience was tested too many times. A DNF was never on the table (this book is still fun, for all the characters were tedious) but there were points where I wished it was. Repetition was used a number of times for comical purposes, and it mostly hit, but there was one scene in particular where I had to skip dialogue more times than I ought to have because of the repetitive content.

I’ve read a fair number of Hall’s books now and I have adored just about all of them. This one might be the one I liked the least, and it’s still not even close to terrible; at least, not compared to some of the other authors I’ve been reading recently. Something unusual I did encounter here was the occasional typo or grammatical error, and a number of clunky dialogue choices unrelated to the inclusion of modern phrasings. From what I can recall, most of Hall’s works I’ve encountered have been extremely well-put-together, so it was a bit of a surprise – enough for me to take note.

FINAL THOUGHTS - OVERALL: 3.75 / 5⭐

Read this book. It’s an experience, and it’s got a lot going for it. It’s far from perfect but it’s still a good time.

This book has representation for gays, lesbians, genderqueer or -fluid individuals, and demisexuals/demiromantics. Multiple badass women do badass things. There is at least one dark-skinned character described.

The following elaborates on my content warnings. These may be interpreted as spoilers, but I do not go into deep detail.

This book contains: theatrical, insensitive, and dismissive comments about suicide; many references to passed-away parents; homophobic rationalizations; alcohol use; potential creepy crawlies (bees, mentions of spiders, an upsetting number of tadpoles); restraint/confinement (character tied to chair, locked in a cellar); infidelity (kind of a gray area on this one but also not really); and, gun violence resulting in a shooting.

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ruthlessreads's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted slow-paced

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

1.0

I absolutely hated this book :'( I wanted so badly to like it, considering that it's exactly the tropes I love and by an author I really enjoy. However, Arabella was insufferable and Bonny was very close to being insufferable as well. She was the absolute worst part of this book and the way she was allowed to just be a piece of shit without any consequences whatsoever really pissed me off. Bonny was also selfish & stupid & annoying but not insufferable. He was often charming but not worth the bullshit that Valentine had to go through. And Valentine--dude was both oblivious and arrogant, but that doesn't mean he deserved

to be tied to a chair and eventually shot.

Bella running away from him repeatedly and refusing to even have a conversation so that they could work all this out was the thing that cinched this up (for me) as just a bad book. It's a shitty plot device and made the book last 200 pages longer than it needed to.

Finally, I've read a lot of queer romance but the flowery asshole talk was absolutely horrible and entirely too much. The only reason I would consider reading the second book is because it's about Peggy (my favorite character of the book, followed by the valet--so that should tell you something about the quality of the main characters) and I believe that Bella will get her comeuppance by the end of it.

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ohheyitskaitlin's review

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adventurous funny lighthearted slow-paced

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

4.0

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wilybooklover's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

3.0

As a farce, this was ridiculously funny and camp and over the top. As a romance... it just wasn't quite there for me. Valentine was an idiot one too many times and the twins verged on too mean one too many times as well (especially Arabella). If both of those aspects were pared back just a touch then I think I'd have loved this.

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kathleenmcg's review

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adventurous lighthearted tense fast-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

4.0

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