Reviews - The Hells of Notre Dame

165 reviews for:

The Hells of Notre Dame

R. L. Davennor

3.41 AVERAGE

leah_reads92's review against another edition

3.75

dark mysterious 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

melissafelicia's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I find this hard to rate, because I loved the story at first, but along the way, I started disliking the main character more and more and I can't put my finger on one clear reason for it. Rather, there were several small things about her that annoyed me that built up throughout the story, which made me slowly lose interest in the plot and the romance as well.

In the beginning, I was on board. The main character carries a lot of religious internalized shame about their attraction to women and as a result, she is cold and distant and anxious and sometimes even mean. This sounded like an interesting complicated character that I would love to see grow throughout the story. And although she does learn to let some people in and grows less distant and unlearns some of the religious shame they have been taught, I still found them quite cold, unforgiving and harsh in the end. I also disliked how overprotective she was of her son and wished we would have seen some growth there. I also started getting annoyed by the nasal voice of the audiobook narrator more and more, but I dont know if that was because of the narration itself or because I just started disliking the character and thus the voice I associated with that.

So the combination of these smaller issues makes me rate it 3.5 stars instead of 4. Perhaps it would be better to read as a physical book, instead of an audiobook.

gigingina's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense 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

screamprincesspa's review

5.0

This author has had me obsessed with their work since I first read A Land of Never After.

The moment I learned that she was working on a dark story inspired but The Hunchback, I stalked her pages until I saw sign-ups. I HAD to have this one. And R.L. did NOT disappoint!

I celebrated with Claude so hard as he came into his gender identity and FINALLY went public with it! His relationship with Esmerelda was rocky, but man oh man did I cheer when the two of them finally came together for good!