Reviews with content warning for Kidnapping - Legendborn

Omg I literally binged this book! It was kinda slow and hard to understand ( for me) the first 130 pages, but the rest was so gripping. I still probably don’t understand everything about the world building, but that’s cause I had no clue what happened in the Arthurian legend 🥲 Anyway, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t either, cause the plot and the relationships are amazing, the grieving process is realistic and well-written. The diversity of legendborn is pretty good as well, with both race, disabilities and lgbtq+🫶🏻
P. S. The banter between some characters got me giggling for real👀

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gabriella_'s review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

Read this entire book on a flight to England and holy shit. The way this book captures grief, trauma, and how it can intersect with misogynoir was gripping.

Tracy Deonn is excellent at character writing and establishing interpersonal dynamics (and conflicts). She also creates a unique atmosphere with obvious (and not so obvious) foes. She empowers her protagonist and makes her multifaceted. She breathes life into Bree and, as a reader, makes her feel so real. And this doesn’t get into how she writes an ensemble cast either - good GOD I would be remiss if I didn’t get into that.

Every character contributes something to the plot and it’s amazing that this author finds a way to do that without rendering them to be one-note or just a plot device. She has a plan for every character - and pieces of dialogue have a way of retaining relevance chapters later in a refreshing way.

I wish I had a book like this when I was a kid. 2,000/10 recommend reading this book if you are interested in fantasy and coming of age books. It’s the gift that keeps on giving! Tracy Deonn, thank you for writing this.

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vaguely_pink's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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

3.75

I think this would've been a 4 star read for me if I had read with my eyes instead of my ears. I started listening to the audiobook in early summer and got about half way through before my Libby loan returned. I enjoyed it, but wasn't totally convinced on the hype this book often gets. Once I was finally able to borrow it again in Libby, I finished the second half in like 2 days and really loved how it wrapped up. These are wonderfully written characters and I'm excited to see how their story continues. Deonn has created an extremely poignant story of southern dark academia that has a lot of important things to say about race and gender in a way that's palatable without doing hard topics any disservice.

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ghostlyprince's review against another edition

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emotional reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.5

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onefineelephant's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

4.5

9/10. I really enjoyed this book. It gave me chills, made me very emotional, and made me really care about the characters. I was taken on such a journey throughout this story. There were so many parts of the story that surprised me and added to the complexity of the plot. Each turn deepened the connections between the characters and the past. The Arthurian legend and the magic feel unique and compelling to me. I'm not really into love triangles, but this one feels very organic. I found this book from booktok and I knew it had racial tensions/racism as part of the plot, but since I like to go into books mostly blind, I was not expecting the story to address generational trauma and touch on the traumas of enslaved women. This is not a negative to me, but just not what I was expecting going into it. I figured the racial tensions would be more microaggressions and modern racist topics (which were also explored). I think this book will be even more interesting after already reading it for the first time.

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dododenise's review against another edition

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adventurous dark 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

4.0

I liked it but there were a few things that made me stumble.

The plot development seemed a bit chaotic and messy. The way the mystery unfolded felt unsatisfying, which is why I was never fully hooked. Additionally, there were quite a few long and dry info dumps that where exhausting to get through. That could have been done a lot more elegantly.

There are a few very interesting characters, like Sel and William, but also a lot of characters that were severely abandoned. The cast of characters is big and it didn’t give them enough time. Most of them were just there, I didn’t care and forgot who they were.

The relationship dynamics were very interesting though. Very quickly I wanted to go read fanfiction and that’s always a good sign. The love triangle situation better be resolved with polyamory! It would be perfect.

This series certainly has a lot of potential. It has great ideas and world building.

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