Reviews with content warning for Grief - Ship Wrecked

Reviews tagging 'Grief'

stegan's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

What a delightful warm hug of a book. I laughed and cried. Dade does an amazing job of creating a fully fleshed out couple, with Peter having as much complexity as Maria, which I genuinely love.

Content Warnings

literarylocd's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional lighthearted medium-paced

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

2.5

Would i recommend: No

TLDR at the end

What i liked:

fat mcs being horny and finding love
Maria MF Ivarsson. my queen, my wife, my one true love. what an icon. a legend. thee moment. i love that she doesn’t compromise her wants for the sake of others. and she’s not afraid of losing her job to uphold her values and beliefs.
“It’s a job, Peter. Only a job. Not worth my happiness.”

What i didn’t like:

the mmc is super immature and just not sexy. he’s a massive ****.
like okay you’ve got a dead mommy and your dad doesn’t understand you. get a therapist lad. He’s also a manipulative arsehole who thinks Maria should follow him until the ends of the earth because ‘if she loved him she wouldn’t leave him’. have a day off
this story takes place over 6 years but we don’t get to see much of them in between. we see them get to know each other and then we see them again being super familiar. it felt kinda strange
maria’s only personality traits are that she’s genuinely a nice person, super sexy and swedish. and peter’s is being insufferable.
“She was about to turn thirty, and it showed.” first of all, ew. second of all, i hated this so much with every fibre of my being. especially when the man saying this is about 9/10 years older than her.
This book has A LOT of cameos (from the previous books) which started out cool but ended super convoluted. It was just a bunch of exposition on the page that the reader just didn’t need. The story would have worked the same way without all the unnecessary explanations.

TLDR; immature MMC, FMC deserves more. a bunch of corny Swedish jokes. Olivia Dade has better books. Read one of those instead.

Content Warnings

thewildmageslibrary's review

Go to review page

4.0

Rating previously held during the HPCUnion strike.

Content Warnings

peachani's review

Go to review page

emotional hopeful slow-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

Content Warnings

sydapel's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional funny 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? It's complicated

3.75

Bumping up because Olivia Dade is doing some incredible stuff in the romance space and deserves a lot more recognition. Probably my least favorite of the Gates of the Gods series this far, but considering how much I loved the first two it's a high bar to clear. Maria and Peter are so well matched and their journey together is done so well. Ultimately, I just didn't think their banter was done as well as it could have and fell a little flat for me.

Content Warnings

thefatpaperback's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional funny hopeful reflective 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

“And that’s how solidarity works, Peter. Welcome to unfettered socialism, you utter skitstövel.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Olivia Dade is the queen of pining, longing, banter, and intimacy. Each book is new, thrilling, and swoon-inducing. She also beautifully builds characters who are so realistic and relatable and complex. In Peter, you get a man who has social anxiety due to his strained relationship with his father. In Maria, you have a shining star of a woman who once was a cold, sad child until the right family found her and loved her unconditionally. SHIP WRECKED delivers all those wonderful feelings Dade promises in each book, and weaves together a story that honors her characters. It’s truly masterful.

Maria sneaks out of the hotel room she stayed in the night before without leaving a note with the man asleep in bed. But hours later she sees him again, reading for the part of Cyprian to her Cassia. He’s very unhappy to see her, which is unfortunate—seeing as they’ve just been cast as leading characters on one of the biggest shows in the world. To make matters worse, they’ll have to film on a deserted island for years. At every turn, the question of whether they should give in to their attraction for one another or prioritize their careers arises. But once the show ends, that problem goes away…right?

🌟FAT REP: BOTH MARIA AND PETER ARE FAT YALL!!!!!!! BOTH OF THEM!!!!! The way Maria and Peter’s bodies are described is FANTASTIC. They’re both big, tall, strong, round, and soft. There are instances of workplace fatphobia in this book, but great representation of advocating for oneself and destigmatizing fat bodies. P.S. Maria doesn’t remove any of her body hair and I love seeing that in a fat character 💛

❤️‍🔥 FAT HERO & FAT HEROINE

❤️‍🔥 Grumpy/Sunshine

❤️‍🔥 One night stand to costars to enemies to friends to lovers

❤️‍🔥 THE SLOWEST BURN AND THE LONGEST PINING

❤️‍🔥Found Family

❤️‍🔥 Forced Proximity

SHIP WRECKED releases 11/15/22! Thank you to Netgalley, Avon, and HarperCollins for allowing me to read this ARC

Content Warnings

decklededgess's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional funny lighthearted relaxing fast-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

Trigger warnings: depression, death of parent, social anxiety, fatphobia, sexual content, alcohol, sexism, death of parent, grief, hypothermia,

Such a stunning conclusion to the Spoiler Alert series! This was my favourite of the three books even though I'm an Alex groupie through and through.

One of my favourite things about this book is the masterful way the timeline and pacing was handled. It's a sort of slow burn even though it opens with their one night stand. It spans around 7 or 8 years of them working on the show but the story doesn't drag on the page. Yet you feel the time pass as the characters grow, as major timeline markers from All The Feels and Spoiler Alert pop up. I loved how even the greater cast of characters also ages on page despite them not being central to the romance.

Peter and Maria are such fun characters. Peter going from butt hurt man baby to able to handle his feelings bc he is working through trauma was really great. Maria has no flaws, she is perfect to me. Peter and Maria start off with a little bit of animosity after their one night stand because Peter is a man-child but I did appreciate that they still had incredible chemistry and ability to banter. They were still compatible despite their antagonism, they just had to learn how to overlook their egos. I enjoyed how Peter learnt to read Maria's love language and communicate his own needs over the course of the book.

I loved the little inside jokes they shared not just between themselves but with the cast as well. And I thoroughly enjoyed how the reader is pulled into these jokes because there are two books of context to it. It made the reading experience feel like watching friends get together after years of pining. Also, the pickled fish gag was my favourite thing. No more context on that so y'all get to enjoy it properly on page.

Seriously, this is a stunning conclusion to the series.

**I don't have first hand experience in the world as a fat/chubby/plus size person so while I didn't find any issues with the representation, I am not the one to comment on that. More authentic reviews will do a better job of feedback on the representation.

Content Warnings

churrosmom's review against another edition

Go to review page

funny lighthearted slow-paced

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

3.0

Disclaimer: I received a Netgalley eARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This book was good but I didn't love it. The premise is the two main characters meet and hook up right from the first page, then Maria ghosts Peter the next morning. Later in the day it turns on they are auditioning to play love interests in a very Game of Thrones-esque TV show. They're both cast and will be filming on location in a small island village in Ireland. The book has a lot of elements of fan fiction, fandom, and similar complaints about the showrunners as in Game of Thrones. There is a lot of pining and slow burn.

I really loved the fat rep and all of the scenes involving Maria's Swedish family and the family she creates with their coworkers during their on location shoots. I loved that there was a big emphasis on the importance of other family/relationships outside of a romantic relationship. However, I felt like the pacing was off. At one point there is a huge time jump and I almost missed the cue of the time jump and was hella confused for a bit. Once the main characters got together it felt like the story felt really distant and not as warm as before. The 180 from Peter during the conflict also didn't make that much sense to me and felt out of nowhere. I also felt quite a lot of distance from the main characters, and didn't connect with them that much. I noticed sometimes it felt like a lot of telling rather than showing.

Content Warnings