Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - Up in Flames

Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Up in Flames by Eden Finley, Saxon James

4 reviews

ruthiedr89's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense fast-paced

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

2.75

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alexandraverlac's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad

3.0

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galleytrot's review

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

3.75

READ: Dec 2023

FORMAT: Audio

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 3.75 / 5⭐

TECHNICAL / PRODUCTION: 3.75 / 5⭐
FINAL – OVERALL: 3.75 / 5 ⭐

After being left at the altar, Remy can see no reason why he shouldn’t go along with Sanden’s suggestion of turning the wedding reception into a “petty party” on Eman’s dime, then going on the honeymoon anyway – with Sanden at his side instead of Eman. It’s not all sunshine and roses once they return home and to their respective lives, though, because Eman has left a much larger stain on Remy’s life than he was willing to notice, and Sanden is haunted by his own traumas that keep him stuck in an unhealthy loop of duty and guilt. The pair must figure out their own problems before they become dangerously co-dependent and bring each other down.

This book held a more serious tone and more sensitive subject matter than I’m used to seeing from either James or Finley, but it still managed to maintain a note of good humor and never felt angsty or cruel. My biggest gripe about it was the way hockey was shoehorned into it at just about any opportunity, as if this book exists as an advertisement for the author-duo’s Puckboy series. Yes, this book’s main characters were all introduced in Aleks and Gabe’s book, so it’s reasonable they show up in Sandon and Remy’s, but the focus could have leaned more strongly on relationship support over the game itself. I found it very out-of-place.

The narrators did a good enough job on this one, but I honestly had a hard time distinguishing between the two of them, on top of neither picking particularly distinct voices – this was occasionally a problem in that I wasn’t always clear who was speaking. As a side-note, I think I’ve heard Gabe through a total of six different narrators by now over two different series plus this standalone, so my brain has no clear voice for him at all.

This book has representation for gays. A single character’s name implies they aren’t white, but they are used as the villain of this book. There is otherwise little else in the way of diversity.

The following elaborates on my content warnings. These may be interpreted as spoilers, but I do not go into deep detail.

This book contains:

alcohol use; implications and accusations of infidelity; emergency response situations resulting in deaths and injuries ranging from mild to severe, including vehicular pileup and fire; injury descriptions including mention of shock, impalement, lacerations, head injuries, etc.; discussions of handling death and grief as first responders; past death of a young family member (house fire); grief, survivor’s guilt; gaslighting, toxic relationship and friendship, emotionally manipulative and abusive relationship; domestic incident, threat of violence, intimidation; and, off-page death of parent (for a minor character).

Content Warnings

kj468's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes

3.0

When I was working on my book journal, I was trying to figure out why this book wasn't as big of a hit as past SJ/EF books for me, and I think what it boils down to is simply: it's more serious than I prefer my KU romances to be. It's not inherently a fault of the book, and the authors made it clear that this book is different from their others. It just isn't the kind of romance book I want to escape into. So that being said, let's get into what I did and didn't love.

LIKES:

It's a good representation of a (past) toxic relationship and friendship. I like that we get to see how both Remy and Sanden were affected by their closeness with Eman (the toxic ex bf/bff respectively). There's some on-page continued (attempted) manipulation and threats of physical abuse, so watch out for that if it's triggering for you, but it's well done and I appreciated seeing how both characters grew in how they reacted to it.
I really like that both MCs go to therapy and work on themselves instead of falling into a codependent relationship with each other that's doomed to crash and burn.

DISLIKES:

CW: There's a graphic car accident (pile-up on the highway) that the characters respond to as firefighters. The CW at the front of the book doesn't really warn for this clearly, and it doesn't spoil anything plot-wise to know it's coming. From the front of the book, it says "Content warnings include emotional manipulation, domestic abuse recovery, death of a child (referenced off page), and any situation the fire department might respond to (car crashes, fires, dead bodies etc)" -- so "car accident" is really thrown in there as a parenthetical possibility, rather than communicating that it's a pretty graphic, deadly scene (no character injury, though).
It's a little odd to me how quickly Remy and Sanden jumped to awesome friends after Eman leaves Remy at the altar, especially since Sanden has kept Remy at arm's length for so many years (and I get why, I get he was pining). It just felt like a sudden and slightly unnatural jump from "at-arm's-length" to "I'm going to be the person supporting you through being left at the altar by the ex-toxic person from both our lives".
The amount of sex clashes with the "take it slow and healthy" thing that's attempted here. Especially since it felt like every time the characters needed/were going to have a serious conversation, they fell into bed instead. I'm all here for smut (hence why I've read all of the SJ/EF books...), and even here for smut in the context of more serious topics, but it felt like the smut was at the expense of the serious themes, ya know?

Ratings: Plot: 3 // Characters: 4 // Spice: 4 // Humor: 3.5 // Representation: 5 // Romance: 2
Pov: Dual 1st person
Tags: left at the altar; ex BFF's ex/ex's BFF; past toxic relationship/friendship; firefighters; pining; MLM; gay MCs

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