Reviews

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

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honeysgogh's review against another edition

3.5

Very slow in the beginning, that it felt like I kept reading the same events over and over. Once it picked it up it was very exciting and I feel I must agree with Leigh Bardugo, this was a very romantic love story if there was a better build up to it.

jwbranton171's review

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adventurous emotional tense fast-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? No

4.0

caitlinreese's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

3.5

naeya's review

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medium-paced

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

2.0

i have mixed feelings about this book. usually i’m a huge fan of leigh bardugo but this? simply did not hit. the prose is soulless, matter-of-fact yet unnecessarily flowery; which is not a qualm i’ve ever had with leigh bardugo’s writing, but oh well. sometimes it feels like she resorts to making lists instead of descriptions, as if she couldn’t be bothered to properly flesh out events as important as hualit’s death. and there’s this oddly detached narrative voice, as if you were hearing the story second hand from the lips of some storyteller, made it hard for me to fully immerse myself into the book or take a liking to any of the characters - or as if you were looking at the story from a birds eye view. they’re all just a bunch of one-dimensional actors in a play, puppets animated for the sake of the story, there’s not much to them at all.
i don’t know if that was the aim, but either way i didn’t really like it; the whole thing just felt like meaningless words on paper, albeit somewhat entertaining enough.
the plot is all over the place yet doesn’t seem to go anywhere; i kept waiting for it to finally make sense but then it never did. i’ve never been so confused in my life. this is the kind of book that makes you go, "that’s it?" - not because you’d like more, but because you’re thoroughly disappointed that all those sentences you’ve just read failed to compound into anything of substance.
the main romance is trite, feels forced and weird. theres an inordinate amount of references to santangel being a man and having a cock, which ok i guess? couldve handled being a little more subtle. i was expecting the while thing to be more of a social commentary on judaism 18th century spain but it failed to advocate for or denounce anything? apart from the obvious fuck the inquisition

annaszell's review against another edition

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dark informative mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

4 ⭐️

I immensely enjoyed Leigh Bardugo's writing style in this one and was amazed by the character development. it took me a while to really get into this book (~100 pages) but afterward, it was hard to put it down.