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cglharmony's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Stalking
Moderate: Death and Suicidal thoughts
grey_poppy's review against another edition
- 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
Moderate: Death and Violence
First book in a long time that gave me that nostalgic and magical feeling of possibilities and unveiling worlds that I would get when I was a child. Like the next door I find just might lead me to the Starless Sea.lizziaha's review against another edition
4.5
This book is like A Series of Unfortunate Events for adults. There’s secret societies and schisms and betrayals and replacements and (doomed?) love and loss and a love of stories and reading and knowledge and mystery and improbable events and the thieving of objects and the lengths which people will go to get them back and there’s fortune tellers and literary references and ordinary people and imagined futures and I could go on and on and on.
Despite being the cause of most of my confusion while reading, I enjoyed the way that the stories within this story began to blend, to the point where I as the reader couldn’t quite tell where one story ended and the other began. It was like I was being buried in the story, covered in layer after layer of words. As a lover of stories, this was ideal for me.
Moderate: Death, Violence, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury
ijustreallyliketrees's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
CW: Don't bother picking this up if you DNF a book as soon as there's a slight Harry Potter reference in a book bc there's a couple minor ones in here.
Graphic: Death and Stalking
Moderate: Violence and Blood
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
talonsontypewriters's review against another edition
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
I can't even comment in depth on the other elements, I feel like, because what little is there gets completely overpowered by the writing. I don't mind purple prose or stylistic experiments, but they need to be supplementing an actually compelling narrative and/or about 70% shorter. Here, though, if you take away the technical frills, you're left with 500 pages' worth of a bunch of scattered concepts that could have been interesting but don't amount to much in execution.
I wasn't super impressed by The Night Circus when I read it either, but I don't remember it being quite this insufferable, so maybe there's some sophomore slump effect going on. Either way, a pretty big disappointment, and irritated me so much at times I would have definitely thrown a physical copy. Honestly, I blame the editor -- if anyone did indeed edit this -- more than Morgenstern, because a good editor might have at least said, "Hey, so if you aren't going to follow a coherent plot or fully flesh out any of your characters, maybe you could at least punctuate your writing so it's readable?" Alas, clearly nothing of the sort happened, and the certain kind of reader I am suffers for it.
Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Violence, Kidnapping, Grief, Stalking, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, and Pregnancy
niff_the_nerd's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Alcohol
Moderate: Death and Blood
Minor: Murder
thatsssorachael's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Graphic: Death
tab9's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Graphic: Blood
Moderate: Death and Stalking
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
chrisljm's review against another edition
- 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? No
3.0
The writing is beautiful for sure but it felt very empty and lacking.
Graphic: Death, Stalking, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Violence, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Alcohol
Minor: Sexual content
latida94's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
This was definitely a book for the story lovers. It's got a bunch of different stories but all connected and a part of one story (which is a lot like real life, really).
Moderate: Death