Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

Gdzie jesteś, piękny świecie by Sally Rooney

54 reviews

astrangewind's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective 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

5.0

Sally Rooney's storytelling style - rooted deeply in the inane details of every day life - becomes even more compelling in Beautiful World. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are each deeply flawed characters with deeply flawed relationships with themselves and each other; it's this complexity that makes them lovable. 

The "plot" (some might argue there is none) is interrupted with emails between Alice and Eileen, which serve primarily as the author's own philosophical projection. At first, I thought this was a little bit much, but by the end of the book I appreciated these vignettes as additional characterization of Alice and Eileen, and Felix and Simon by proxy. 

I loved these messy characters and their messy lives, and I rooted for them to the end. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Sexual violence, Self harm, Alcohol, Pandemic/Epidemic, Pregnancy, Chronic illness, Toxic relationship, Adult/minor relationship, Toxic friendship, Mental illness, and Drug use

reddeddy's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Sexual content, Alcohol, Drug use, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Abandonment, Bullying, Grief, Pandemic/Epidemic, Panic attacks/disorders, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Minor: Cursing, Classism, Adult/minor relationship, Abortion, Biphobia, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Pregnancy, and Sexism

hevlav's review against another edition

While I did enjoy some of the more reflective pieces of this, these characters are awful and unloveable. Yes, entirely human, but insufferable in a novel. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship

semporina's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic friendship, Addiction, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, Self harm, Grief, Mental illness, Pregnancy, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Suicide attempt, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual assault, Adult/minor relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Death, Dementia, Eating disorder, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Vomit

racbuckallew's review against another edition

funny reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.25

mad that after everything we got a pandemic not a foursome 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic, Sexual content, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Adult/minor relationship

theothergrl's review against another edition

reflective medium-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

4.5

Sally Rooney's characters are nothing if not realistic. I felt I was reading about the people in my own life, about the actual stories of ordinary folk. These aren't love stories that swell the heart with big gestures and serendipitous circumstances that have one believing in the miracles of romance. But they are real. The end game is flawed, the relationships are messy, not in the dramatic sense, but ordinarily so. Sally Rooney writes, with good understanding, about the socio-economic factors that play into our interpersonal lives. How class differences can forge oceans between us, how power dynamics in age gaps can be so easy to fall into and so hard to crawl out of. I found it smart, the way she wrote in third person, as an observer, because it really instated the reality of such things. That most of the time they aren't overcome. That, at the end of the day, these are just the normal people we see at the supermarket or catching a train. I appreciated that the most when I finished the book. I felt like I was being told that it's going to be okay, that even though I can't overcome everything, there is still beauty to be found amongst it all.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, Drug use, Mental illness, Religious bigotry, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Bullying, Pregnancy, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide

lexa's review against another edition

4.25

This book took a bit of time for me to get into… and then I was hooked. Drawn in my the drama and screwed up characters. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Drug use, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Pregnancy and Sexual content

luciataylor's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

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

3.75

The way that this book was written: Alice’s perspective followed with her email to Eileen, and then Eileen’s email back followed by her perspective was unique and enjoyable. Buried in a contemporary novel about two complicated relationships were essays about politics and culture which were very interesting while also indirectly sharing a lot about the characters and the way they view the world. Although the intolerable Felix and icky Simon made the novel hard to get through and the relationships impossible to route for, on my second Sally Rooney book, I have realised that depicting these deeply flawed characters and terrible men in 'situationships' without condemning their behaviour or having any redemption to them is the point of her books. Rooney is actually just brilliant at writing complex (and hateable) characters without explicitly spelling out  their actions and words as “bad,” although they are intolerable to read and see women fall for (it is realistic - perhaps why it’s so frustrating) it is interesting to read from the third person instead of living it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship and Emotional abuse

naff_tm's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• 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: Sexual content

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Mental illness, and Medical trauma

pmejia's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective medium-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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Mental illness, Adult/minor relationship, Suicidal thoughts, and Alcohol

Minor: Death, Drug use, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Pregnancy