Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Wren in the Holly Library by K.A. Linde

46 reviews

omgeenatalie's profile picture

omgeenatalie's review

3.5
adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous mysterious medium-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: Complicated

This was a very fun read with fascinating world building, and an enticing storyline. I definitely enjoyed it, recommend it, and will be reading the rest of the series if I can.

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

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mpbookreviews's profile picture

mpbookreviews's review

2.0
dark emotional mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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adventurous 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

An action packed (and slightly spicy) urban fantasy, that I knew I had to pick up as soon as I heard it was loosely inspired by Beauty and The Beast. 

And I’m soo glad I did as K.A. Linde’s sizzling, high stakes fantasy lived up to all of my expectations. Delivering a deliciously pacy, monster-filled heist narrative with a surprising amount of emotional depth in its cast of characters. 

Particularly in Kierse, our endearingly cynical (Lila Bard-esque) protagonist whose resilience, resourcefulness and fierce determination won me over almost instantly. 

I loved exploring her sardonic sense of humour and found her survivalist mindset as a thief rather intriguing. Though it was seeing her process her newly discovered abilities, whilst also working through her personal struggles (childhood trauma, issues of trust,etc.) And finally let down her guard with the mysteriously broody Graves, that really made this a standout read for me.

The slow burn chemistry of their partnership (and their enemies-turned-reluctant-allies dynamics) was intense in the most swoon-worthy of ways. And only got even better once the similarities in their life experiences became apparent. 

Though, I did hope we’d explore the Celtic mythology aspect and history surrounding the Monsters (and the Monster Wars) a little bit more. This is the start of a new series however, so I’m hopeful this was just establishing the world and we’ll delve deeper into both in the sequel (which I’m beyond excited for.) 

Overall, a really enjoyable read with a knife wielding (emotionally complex) FMC who completely stole my heart. But do check TWs

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michelles_booknook's profile picture

michelles_booknook's review

4.0
adventurous emotional hopeful medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

i'm gonna start this review by saying i normally try to give an overall summary of my thoughts, a list of things i liked, and a list of things i didn't like. but with this book? in all honesty, it was so incredibly hollow and devoid of anything for me to latch onto. which is infuriating in its own right, but it especially pisses me off for one very important reason that i'll address after the tl;dr.

tl;dr of my review: this book was boring and nothing left an impact on me. barely remembered most of the character's names, barely remembered things that happened in it a week later, and even the sex scenes were boring. it has the effect of a michael bay transformer's movie, which is to say that a lot of shit is happening but at the same time nothing is happening, and a few days after watching it, you probably couldn't tell someone what it was about without looking at a wikipedia summary. how was this 16 hours? jesus christ.

with that out of the way.

this book hits a very big pet-peeve and grievance of mine: when the friends of the main character are supposedly the most important thing in the world to them, but we barely know them and the love interest takes up most of the screen time.

i really love irish mythology, lore, culture--have been finding time to research and read about it the past couple years--and it was just so fucking irritating to slog through this book and get the reveal we did in the end. a reveal that didn't feel earned, didn't feel genuine, and that felt so empty to me that i wanted to start clawing at the walls, burrow through the ceiling onto the roof and howl at the sky.

i hate... SO very much... that the relationship of these three characters feels like a footnote. i hate that we're told time and time again how close and found-family they are to each other, but we're almost never shown it through actions that aren't done directly to move the plot along. kierse has just about all of her "big moments" with graves. i have no reason to believe kierse cares about her friends outside of her telling me she does or insisting--with her words--that they're her closest friends, her family.
so then to bring them together as a physical representation of the triskele??
UUUUUUGHHHH. 

i dunno. i just. i'm so sick of the platonic relationships being sidelined until there's a big dramatic moment. i'm tired of them barely being explored, so when they are said to be important and/or meaningful all we really have to go off of is the MC being like "source: trust me, bro". 

ugh. the fight scenes were clunky, i don't believe any of the relationships, the characters themselves have the impact of sopping wet cardboard, and i'm just glad to be free of this book. will absolutely not be reaching for the sequel. 

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maryp20's profile picture

maryp20's review

4.0
adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-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: No

I really enjoyed this story, it was so much fun. My two turn offs throughout were the amount of parallels to Throne of Glass for me and I felt like I was wanting more detail throughout, like there was so much happening but the descriptions were kept short. Other than that I loved this story! The characters no matter how important or involved were so diverse in heritage and nationality and even species. I also loved the idea that Graves put out that all fairytales stem from a kernel of truth, I think that was such a great way of foreshadowing important details and context clues. Also loved all the characters and I especially liked the interludes and seeing a different character’s POV throughout the story. Very excited to read the next book when it comes out!

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mockingjaygutgs's review

4.5
adventurous mysterious medium-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

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quiet_reader's profile picture

quiet_reader's review

3.0
adventurous challenging dark inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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