Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

3 reviews

steviaplath's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense 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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide attempt, Death, Abortion, Blood, Suicide, Xenophobia, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Infidelity, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, War, Violence, and Gore

Moderate: Classism, Medical content, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Transphobia, Abandonment, Death of parent, Antisemitism, Confinement, Toxic relationship, Cursing, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual content, Medical trauma, and Misogyny

Minor: Emotional abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Outing, Ableism, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, and Vomit

rieviolet's review against another edition

dark emotional sad 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

3.0

This book felt even longer than it is, it was a bit of a hard slog for me to get to the end. I really wanted to try a book by Sarah Waters  but I think I did not choose the right one.
I do not question her writing style (she clearly is really a very accomplished writer) but I was left quite disappointed with the story itself.

I had a really hard time connecting with the characters and their relationships and even understanding their actions/motivations. Aside from Kay and Duncan a bit, for the others, I have to be honest, I cared very little and I was not much captivated by their storylines.

I'm not sure that I really understand the author's decision to rearrange the chronological order of the events, I do not think that it added to the story, quite the opposite actually.
In the first section you are thrown into the characters' circumstances without
knowing anything about how they got there and, at least for me, it made it hard to get through the story, it was difficult to understand and get close to the characters. I think that the end also suffered from this narrative choice; it felt quite abrupt and like we were left with nothing much in terms of a closure, just loose threads.

Lastly, be mindful of the trigger warnings, there were a couple of scenes that very really difficult for me to read, 

Helen's scene of self-harm was especially hard and upsetting.

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion, Blood, War, Toxic relationship, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Sexual content, Sexism, Self harm, Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, Medical content, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Death, and Child death

Moderate: Vomit, Suicidal thoughts, Pregnancy, Body shaming, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Classism

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Antisemitism, Transphobia, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Genocide, Cursing, Excrement, and Ableism

anditsreal's review

emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Miscarriage, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, and Suicide

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship