Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Mine to Possess

Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

Mine to Possess by Nalini Singh

8 reviews

cocpop_reads's review

dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

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

4.0

This was a tougher book because of the content. Although nothing is stated explicitly, there is abuse to a child that is heavily implied and the resulting trauma.

Clay and Talin’s story is much darker than the others but no less hopeful. I’m glad that by the end, they both are accepting of everything of each other.

I desperately want to know who the Ghost is, I have my thoughts but I’m gonna keep them until there’s more hints.

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sup3r_xn0va_maya's review against another edition

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challenging dark 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? Yes

3.5

The story was interesting but I didn't love the two main characters, Tally and Clay.
The abuse mentions in the story were hard for me to get through for personal reasons.
I'm interested to see where the story is going as far as the Psy Counsel goes, so I'm excited to continue the series. This is my lowest rated Nalini Singh book though, I don't think the main characters resonated with me like the other main characters of the other 3 books did.

I'm giving this 3.5 stars out of 5.

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vivivi's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful 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

5.0

I am a sucker for the "childhood friends turned lovers" trope. Let me just start with that. Talin and Clay are super cute together!

This one pulls at the heartstrings, is full of history, misunderstandings, betrayals, and hurt feelings. But it's also interspersed with the characters' strong loving feelings for each other, which balances it out, making the hurt feelings bearable for me. It is not always the case for me with Nalini Singh (one of the Rock Kiss books comes to mind), but in this one, it's sweet, sweet torture. I love that we see the characters from the other books! They're very much still a part of the story.

We also learn more about the Forgotten, which were only briefly mentioned in the previous book. One thing that I enjoy in this series is that everything is connected somehow, and will come up later if mentioned earlier. It's a great way to keep me reading the next book.

Also, as an aside since Storygraph has a section that asks if the characters are diverse... yes, they are, but you'd never know by the cover, which are almost always of white people. The actual characters are definitely not always white.... So it's verrrrry annoying when the covers don't reflect the actual characters' skin. Clay is supposed to be a "dark" man, by Tali's own description. He has very dark skin...the covers for this book though... Nope. Not even close.

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givemaribooks's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

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

2.0

I really struggled with this book. I went in hoping there was a good reason for Clay thinking Talin had died because I usually hate this troupe. There’s rarely a good reason for it, but in this case that was not my problem with the book. I think Talin had a legitimate reason to do what she did and wanting to stay away from Clay. It’s not like she knew they were mates, for all she knew he would have been fine without her as adults. She had a lot of trauma and had suffered enough. Wanting to have a clean break from her past, especially as a child, makes total sense to me.

And here comes why I struggled with this book. I hated Clay whenever was around Talin. He was fine on his own, but he was an overbearing judgmental asshole to Talin. She owed him nothing. She was a traumatized 12 year old when they last saw each other. She didn’t owe him fidelity, and judging her for sleeping around was unforgivable to me. At one point, she even feels impure because of her past, including because of the abuse, and that was so problematic to me. It’s one thing for her to have those feelings and to have reacted to the abuse by becoming promiscuous, but he doesn’t get to judge that. As I said, she didn’t own him fidelity and he didn’t own her body. And apart from the slut-shamming (and a bit of victim-blaming), I don’t think the puritanical views about sex that keep appearing in these books make any sense in this setting. One on hand we are told that younger shifters are very sexual and need sex, but then they also expect their mates to magically be virgins?! Make it make sense! This is also supposed to be in the future and they still are worried about virginity?! Even the psy not having sex doesn’t make sense. It’s a normal bodily function. It would’ve made more sense for them to be super causal about sex and treat it the same as exercise the way they do yoga.

I was also annoyed with the story line about Talin’s missing time. It didn’t really add to the story for her to be further violated this way. As in the previous book, the author used sexual trauma as a plot device. It felt unnecessary since she was already dealing with trauma and she could just had missing time without it being about sex.

The author also uses outdated terms, especially when it came to ableist language.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator is great.

CW: murder, child sexual abuse (recounted), medical issues, trauma from neglect and abuse

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