Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Vengeful by V.E. Schwab

140 reviews

bookthief404's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Incredible. 
Once again Schwab doesn't disappoint. 
I love the set up of starting from an unknown point and only giving the reader snippets from '3 weeks ago' to 'yesterday afternoon'. I loved putting the pieces together of what the separate characters were doing and seeing it all come together. The anticipation as the time got shorter leading to the climax was really fun to watch unravel. 

The ending was satisfying yet not at all. I like how open-ended Shwab left it. We sympathise with Victor already so we are relieved when he 'wins' (if you can call it that), and yet there isn't really a happy-family happy ending as we were led to hope for. 
This is the kind of thing I love. I wish Sydney and Mitch and even June all the best until I meet them again.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Self harm, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Mass/school shootings, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

leawhoelse's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This story is so brutal but so genius at the same time. It kept me reading just because I wanted to know who was in the right and who would cooperate or not. I think Vengeful was even better than Vicious. The characters became much more three-dimentional which I liked a lot. And the ending was just something else. Just read it. 
10/10 would recommend. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, and Murder

nyssbomb's review against another edition

adventurous dark slow-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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Blood, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

freyabarton's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-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

4.75

fantastic sequel, had a lot to live up to but didn’t disappoint. I was on the edge of my seat especially towards the end it was INTOXICATING. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

jewellelizabeth's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

5.0

Schwab somehow managed to write a sequel even darker, more gruesome, and more intriguing than  Vicious, while giving more screen time (page time?) than the first book to the duology's more kindhearted characters—Mitch and Sydney—and even adding in a bit of a found family trope! Vengeful gripped me from page 1 and didn't let go until the very end. I highly, highly recommend this series—it's definitely going on my list of favorites for sure! I do wish we had gotten a bit more closure/answers with June's character, though perhaps Schwab will choose to explore that later in a spin-off.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Violence, and Murder

sarah_cameron's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

This book was perfect from start to end! It kept me constantly on the edge of my seat and was such a great follow up to the first book. Can’t recommend highly enough 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gun violence, Sexism, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical trauma, and Murder

Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Self harm, Police brutality, Medical content, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal death, Cursing, Vomit, Stalking, and Car accident

eve_reads's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Overall Thoughts:
 
 ⁕ So much of Vicious focused on Victor's perspective, whereas Vengeful gives more focus to the origin stories of Eli and other characters. The addition of these details strengthened my understanding of character development and choices in the series overall.

⁕ I am SO HERE for the female super villian. I love the exploration of power and greed through her eyes. I love her glaring faults and ugly hopes. She is definitely one of my new favorite characters. 

⁕ I complained in my review of Vicious that the book was not as violent or gory as people claimed. This book definitely rectifies that. The stakes are RAISED.

 ⁕ Somehow, V.E. Schwab manages to write about violence and gore like poetry. Her style never ceases to amaze me. 

To read my full review, visit: https://evereads.online/
For regular book-related content, follow my Instagram account: @eve_reads

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Animal death, Chronic illness, Death, Sexual content, and Murder

Minor: Sexual assault

the_othersidewv's review against another edition

adventurous dark slow-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Fire/Fire injury, and Abandonment

Minor: Death, Drug use, Racism, and Grief

alexiab's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.75

This book was almost on par with the first in terms of general storytelling method, except I found it lacked a fair bit of what made the first book so compelling. 

The shift in focus away from Victor and Eli, and spending so much time on backstory for new characters that still didn’t feel important, threw a bit of a wrench in the story for me. Of all the new characters, I found June the most interesting and I think she got the least amount of development. I couldn’t find it in me to care about Marcella, and I wish more had gone into Sydney and Mitch, or even more time with Victor and Eli. 

Overall I still enjoyed this book and I love what I did get for Victor and Eli, but a lot of the side stuff felt like filler that wasn’t necessary, especially since a lot of it clearly won’t be brought into the third book when it’s eventually released. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Self harm, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Murder

rachelunabridged's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.5

i have been so excited + scared to read this book. i loved vicious so much and wanted to have more of that, but was worried it wouldn't be as good. unfortunately, that did happen, but not to so great an extent.

was vicious better than vengeful? imo, big yes.
was i disappointed in vengeful? tbh, not really. vicious wrapped up so well + felt like its own stand-alone story; i feel like vengeful is almost like a bonus story. like you don't have to read it to complete the story from vicious, but if you enjoyed vicious, here's some extra time with the characters we know and love.
would i recommend vengeful? if you loved vicious + want to see more of the characters, i would say go into this with lower expectations.

ultimately, what made me feel like this read was less compelling is how stretched it felt. there was just entirely too much going on at any given time with all of the new characters + there just seemed to be no clear focus. it really felt like the story was heavily centered around marcella, but then victor + the crew were kinda shoehorned in with no real purpose until the end.

for example, i really thought we were going somewhere with sydney exploring + trying to strengthen her powers, but not only did she decide not to resurrect her sister (good move), but she also didn't get to use them to help victor. so why did that even need to be such a huge plot point? it came off to me like it was just a reason to keep her in the story.

i definitely came away feeling like if it had been written with entirely new characters, this might've been a stronger story. or even if our main characters were given better reasons to be involved.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, and Murder

Moderate: Animal death