Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

Winterkeep by Kristin Cashore

9 reviews

gen_nh's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-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? It's complicated

4.25

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how_sweet_the_sound's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious sad 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

5.0

This book is very different from the rest of the Graceling realm series, especially with it’s multiple POVs, but it’s a beautiful story of love for each other and for one’s country as Bitterblue wants to continue to right the wrongs done to Monsea and Lovisa wants to right the wrongs done to herself and her family.
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bencaroline's review

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funny mysterious tense
  • 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

4.0

not gay enough!
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ksykes's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

I really enjoyed this but I’m not 100% sure what to think of it yet. My favourite points of view are the telepathic fox and telepathic sea monster, and I also really loved Giddon’s character arc. It threw me that, because of the world expansion, the vibe of this book is distinctly more dystopian in flavour than previous ones (it actually reminded me a lot of The Queen of the Tearling). I didn’t dislike it but it wasn’t necessarily what I was hoping for from the book.

I haven’t read enough race theory to have formed a confident opinion on this but her portrayal of race struck me as a bit problematic. It was hard not to lay our own world and culture over top of the ones she has created and I don’t think the expectation should be that readers <em>can</em> do that. In context of the series as a whole her depiction of race becomes a little less problematic but I think these books are still meant to operate as standalones?

All that to say I really enjoyed this. It’s more in the vein of Bitterblue than Fire or Graceling and has a riveting mystery at its centre.

One final thing, there should be a huge trigger warning for extreme emotional and physical abuse of a main point-of-view character and other children.
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megansreading's review

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slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated

2.0

This was such a disappointment. It’s a large break in tone and setting from the rest of the series—if you enjoyed Graceling, I’m not sure this is the book for you. I just need to ask: Of all the stories in the Graceling world, why did this one need to be told???

Here are the good bits:
  • Surprisingly, I enjoyed reading from the fox’s POV. He had the clearest motivations of all the characters. (Though I’m still not sure why he was heroically wanting to help Louisa, who despised him.)
  • I enjoyed Hava and the exploration of her grace. It felt right to give her more page time she wasn’t able to have in Bitterblue and the different graces have always been one of my favorite parts of this world.
  • Lastly,
    Though I know others disagree, I did enjoy Giddon and Bitterblue’s romance. It felt like they genuinely cared and relied on one another—even if they were separated for a lot of the book.

Now for the bad bits:
  • This book takes forever to get started. I think I was around 150 pages in before it felt like things were actually happening. This boring pace continues for the rest of the book. It felt like too much was being thrown at me at once with no indication of where the plot was actually going. There was no clear goal and motivation that I could point to. And I’m not even sure everything was resolved by the end.
  • Which brings me to the large cast of characters that were so forgettable. It’s a good thing there was a cast list in the back of the book because the side characters were so interchangeable that I never remembered who was who. I was missing the deep characterization from the previous books. Most of the side characters I didn’t hate…because I honestly didn’t know them well enough to care about them at all.
  • Lovisa was one of my least favorite protagonists I’ve read in a long time. She was hypocritical, self-centered (except for when she threw in mentions of her brothers so we would have sympathy for her), and just rude. I understand she comes from a rough home life (see the next section on themes), but she did not seem to make any effort at all to be kind to people who were kind to her. I was sympathetic but not at all empathetic. She outright admits that she uses people for sex and she has next to no healthy relationships. There is not a single character, aside from her brothers that are just personality-less tools, that Lovisa cares about. It’s hard to be invested in her when she doesn’t have anyone in her life that she’s connected with. This also makes me not want to care about the other characters, as mentioned previously. She could be interesting as a side character, but it was not enjoyable to be in her perspective. 
  • There were so many themes going on in this book that it felt like none of them were properly explored. In her previous books, the author did a fabulous job exploring the effects/consequences of abuse and manipulative parental relationships. But that even seemed to fall flat for me. 
  • Normally I don’t bring this up in reviews, but let’s talk about the sex for a moment. For one, the on-page sex scenes were too explicit and numerous to allow this book to be YA. To be brief, Lovisa has a super unhealthy relationship with sex, and it is never condemned. It’s reasonable considering her upbringing that she would have an unhealthy relationship with sex, but it’s never portrayed as wrong that she uses people for sex and uses sex as a distraction/harmful coping mechanism for trauma. Sex has real emotional consequences, especially when used in an unhealthy way. Additionally, this is a huge break in tone from the previous books—and it is largely unnecessary to the plot.
  • Along with themes,
    In one of Bitterblue’s POV chapters it’s mentioned twice that Lovisa seems to be contemplating suicide. This suicidal ideation was NEVER mentioned in any other chapters, not even in Lovisa’s POV. It didn’t even feel like a natural direction of Lovisa’s personality. It felt like a weird deviation and like throwaway lines about an incredibly sensitive, deep topic. We get one mention at the very end of the book from Lovisa about it, but overall it either needed to be developed more or cut completely.
  • There is also one character who is entirely replaceable/unnecessary. 
     There is not one thing Katu did that couldn’t have been done by someone else. Since everyone assumes he’s dead anyway, it isn’t like we’re eagerly hoping to find him. Plus we don’t even get any page time with him, so I don’t care that he’s missing. And are we going to pretend that Katu, with all the time he supposedly spent with Lovisa and the boys, didn’t know they were living in an abusive home??? I feel like the catalyst for this story would have been better if Saf or Prince Sky had been taken by the airship instead. I would have cared more and so would’ve Bitterblue.

There is probably more I could say but this will suffice. I’m really sad that this novel didn’t expand on this world in a way that I enjoyed. I almost wish the author had created this in a different, standalone world since there is such a large deviation in setting and themes. 

I will not be rereading this book and I will probably not read any of the following books in this series.
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darth_twain's review

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adventurous emotional sad slow-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

2.5

If you are a fan of other YA fantasy novels, then you will enjoy the story of this book. Be aware of adult content that is not appropriate for young readers. I enjoyed the story but will be throwing the book away before I have children of my own who could stumble across this book and read adult content slipped into a YA story. 
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melplays9000's review

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious 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

5.0

This book just came at the perfect time for me. I haven’t really been loving what I’m reading lately and this book broke that cycle for me. I loved following familiar characters but with some new ones in there also, they showed genuine, real and raw emotions throughout the story and they just felt like they could be real people. I was so invested in the story and found myself thinking about this book even when I wasn’t reading it. And of course Kristin Cashore delivered as always, this book is once again super sex positive and shows it all from birth control to the struggle for emotional attachments in a way that is real and needs to be spoken about more in YA. 

I must say however that the beginning of this book did feel a little rushed to me. There wasn’t much time to get back into the characters and the world before we were thrust right into the main plot. Saying that, the series as a whole doesn’t really have a overarching plot, which I also find a little strange. Each book has its own plot which is just the characters reacting to what is happening to and around them. I’m not sure this is something I specifically don’t like, just an observation which I’m not sure how I feel about. 

Overall this book was exactly what I wanted and needed it to be at the time I read it. I definitely need to read more fantasy and more series because clearly that’s what I like best. 5 stars. 
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geekmom's review

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad 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? Yes

4.5

After a pretty clunky start, this novel delivers! 
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jenkneebee's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful 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? No

4.0

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