A review by lokes
Die Verlobten des Winters by Christelle Dabos

adventurous mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.25

This was… well, is was something. 
The worldbuilding was a bit sloppy, but interesting, but plot and characters? Icky. Like, really bad. 

Not only did it have tropes such as forced marriage and hints of pedophilia (as soon as the guy was always called a “man with his big hands; like a father; etc” and the woman described as “girl with small hands; being generally very young and clueless and in need of constant help”) I had a bad feeling and boy wasn’t I wrong. 

I don’t know why so many people like a book which is filled with sexism, weird stereotypes, classism, racism and basically everything you don’t want to read about when it is normalized (or rather being glorified, because you just couldn’t catch a break when reading. It just kept coming)

I do feel like I need to apologize to the person I am now that I read this book because it wasn’t pleasant and I feel like I need to unlearn all of the very harmful stuff I just read about. 

The writing style’s not bad though, I could have liked it without the weird content. 



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