Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Vladimir

Immensely captivating with a disappointing & rushed ending. Gives ‘I Love Dick’ by Chris Kraus energy 3❤️‍🔥

NB Personally disagreed with 90% of the protagonists’ thoughts & actions + her critiques of feminism, consent & cancel culture in a post me too era - but worth reading.

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maddyontheoffbeat's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.75

I really like how she portrayed the main character, with all of her insecurities about aging, but the off-branches about “the new generation” felt a little pedantic and overdone. I guess I was also expecting either a Lolita thing or a My Dark Vanessa vibe, which it was not. It kinda just skirted the edges of if. I also felt that the ending kind of came out of nowhere.

it felt to me that the fire was just an excuse to end it sooner, and that it didn’t really wrap up the story.

It just feels like there’s a lot unsaid.

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amanda02143's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Incredible writing. As an academic, so much of the setting and drama felt eerily accurate. Small town life, department and college politics, energetic new faculty vs the old guard, the changing norms and culture and the accompanying complications. The narrator, too, is very relatable in all her neuroses and flaws. Accomplished, beloved by students, and yet insecure about aging and her appearance while simultaneously hating herself for caring about superficial standards. All of which is to say this book had me fully engrossed....up to a point. SPOILER

The sharp plot turn beginning with the lunch date with Vladimir and her "plan" defied credibility. The lack of planning, for someone whose core identity is a researcher, is completely out of character. I was cringing, though willing to see where things were headed, until the zip ties and padlock.

From that point, the last third of the book seemed almost like an entirely different book. The plot is rushed to a resolution and all of the complexity that was pain-stakingly developed is thrown out with the fire.

Sid and her partner, Vlad and his wife all work things out and everyone just carries on?? Most implausible of all, even dinosaur professors save to the cloud these days. Too neat and tidy.

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adamsbookshelf's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

1.0

Wow this book just hit all the wrong boxes for me. It was so boring and felt condescending.

The first 2/3 of the novel had almost nothing to do with Vladimir and about the MC dealing with her husbands SA accusations. Our MC is kind of an awful human and keeps insisting that she doesn't stand by his actions but proceeds to stand by his actions?? And don't even get me started on when she drugs Vladimir ties him up, gaslights him into believing he wanted to do BDSM and lying about his wife having an affair. He then decides he wants to sleep with our MC for god knows why and plot twist, she no longer wants to sleep with him. Well until she changes her mind and they have the worst described sex I've ever read in a novel. Then the cabin burns down and she stays with her husband and moves to a new place to recover from her burns. In the last chapter she meets with one of the SA victims and it's the quickest character interaction in the novel and almost feels forced.

Overall I did not enjoy the story or the characters and only gave it one star because the cover is hot.

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