Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Strange the Dreamer (Owlcrate Exclusive) by Laini Taylor

10 reviews

kylemhaggerty's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful mysterious tense fast-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

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood, Toxic friendship, Death, Kidnapping, Murder, Child death, Colonisation, Rape, Sexual assault, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Abandonment, and Fire/Fire injury

xio72's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced

4.0

Beautifully written, magical and hopeful yet challenging and dark story about mysterious people with otherworldly and dangerous powers, and the city who fears them. Glad I read it when the second book is available to pick up immediately, since it ends on a cliffhanger.

On the negative side: 

Note that the adult/minor relationship tag refers to a 20-year-old in a romantic relationship with a 17-year-old, which I personally think is close enough in age to be acceptable in the world of this story, although other readers may not agree, as in our real world it seems rather sus for a 3rd year college student to be dating an 11th grader in high school.

There are also descriptions of a sexually active 15-year-old with their teenage lover, plus mentions of another young couple who are sleeping together. All the teenage sex, despite not being graphically described but only alluded to artistically, was rather off-putting because an adult writer should not be encouraging her adolescent readers to engage in sex - it leads to consequences like STDs/STIs, unwanted pregnancies, and emotions that are too complicated for most young people to understand.

This inevitably results in broken hearts and emotional trauma in the majority of cases, which then leads to some (or many) people having difficulty finding love as adults because their teen romances ripped a hole in their heart they've not been able to repair so far. For real, I know people in their 50s who still haven't recovered from their adolescent entanglements and that's why they are single today... and that's why their would-be partner is also single. These are consequences that resulted in the unhappiness of two people (much like Eril-Fane and Azareen in this book, although in their case they had no choice in the matter).

So if you're a teenager reading this review - don't be inspired by the exploits of the young lovers in this book, and instead wait until you're older to chase... "that." You'll have more of a chance to mature and develop so that you also meet somebody mature who can give you the true love you'll want to receive and give in return.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Emotional abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Racial slurs, Slavery, Toxic friendship, Bullying, Child abuse, Gore, Death of parent, Grief, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, Child death, Confinement, Genocide, Murder, and Racism

Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, War, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Suicidal thoughts, and Violence

doodeedoda's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

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

4.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic friendship, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Murder, Child death, Grief, and Rape

Moderate: Death and Death of parent

Minor: Adult/minor relationship and Blood

maeverose's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

3.25

Things I liked:
The story was fun. The writing is super pretty and atmospheric. So many quotes i wanted to highlight. It was very easy for me to imagine what was being described, and i loved that. I like Lazlo a lot as a character. I like anything to do with dreams so I loved that that was a big part of the story.

Things I didn’t like:
Sarai’s chapters/the citadel chapters felt super repetitive, at least in the beginning. I was often pretty bored during those chapters. As much as I love the writing, it is overwritten at times. I think this book should’ve been about 100 pages shorter, the pacing is very slow for most of it. Also the reveals were pretty predictable but I guess that’s not super surprising for YA. It’s also very instalove. Very mild spoilers for this next part (it doesn’t have to do with the main romance, just side characters): I didn’t like the non consensual kiss played off as funny because it was a girl doing it to a guy. If the roles were reversed I don’t think it would’ve gone down the same… It’s still sexual assault no matter who’s doing it. And then when it happens again later it was still very dubious consent at first. Idk it made me feel gross.

I hate everything about that ending. I hate minya so much. Please tell me she dies a painful death in the next book. And that sparrow is able to bring sarai back to her body with her powers and then sarai and lazlo get to live happily ever after. If that doesn’t happen I’m suing. /j

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Blood, Child death, Death, Rape, Slavery, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, Child abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Confinement, Gore, Sexual assault, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury

There was frequent mention of female fertility and ‘becoming a woman’ once you bleed. Personally it made me uncomfortable, as an afab non binary person with zero desire to ever get pregnant.

cookiecat73's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

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

2.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Genocide, Murder, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide attempt, Violence, Xenophobia, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Child death, Death of parent, and Kidnapping

Minor: Pregnancy and Misogyny

bethy_joy's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense 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

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Child death, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Abandonment, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Child abuse, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Sexual content, and Slavery

thewordsdevourer's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

this book doesnt totally click w/ me. idk if it's the plot--or lack thereof--or what, but there's something missing. so it's rly a testament to laini's vivid, seemingly boundless imagination; impeccable and wholly original worldbuilding; her ability to make the simple seem magical and extraordinary; thought-provoking and emotional exploration of hatred, love, survival, living, horrors and trauma of war; her writing that is pure poetry; and--though it's too sweet and toe-curling for my taste--the tenderness and longing and hope infused between sarai and lazlo, that strange the dreamer nevertheless gets 4 stars. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Confinement, Murder, Violence, Sexual content, and War

Minor: Child death, Sexual assault, Slavery, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, and Toxic friendship

albireotales's review against another edition

adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.0

Loved Lazlo. Suffered for Sarai.
Hated Minya. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood

Moderate: Abandonment, Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Grief, Kidnapping, Torture, and Toxic friendship

hanarama's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful fast-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

4.75

The Good:
• Beautiful prose
• Omniscient narrator, looks into all POV
• World building unfolds gradually

The Bad:
• Romance felt a bit shallow

You Might Like This if You Like:
• Disney's Atlantis 
• Lost Kingdoms
• Fairytales 

Wow! I adored my time in Weep. Laini Taylor's prose here is very soothing—perfectly suited for the dreaminess of this story. 

The lost kingdom premise sucked me in immediately. It reminded me very much of Atlantis, which has been a comfort movie for me for awhile. 

I really enjoyed both Lazlo and Sarai as protagonists. They're both thoughtful and caring. That said, I felt that the relationship between them was very surface level. I get that this is YA, but it was almost too fairytale for me. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Toxic friendship, Emotional abuse, and Death

Moderate: Child death, Gaslighting, and Racism

oddduck's review against another edition

mysterious reflective slow-paced

4.0

This was a reread for me, and I did not remember anything that had happened (because I read this 5 years ago, when it first came out), but as I was reading this time, I was very certain that many of my thoughts were the same ones I had the first time I read this.

For starters, this is a very beautiful book. I love the cover, and the writing itself is also very lovely. I was especially drawn to the way she kept slipping absolutely knockout lines about the nature of humanity in amongst the description and exposition. The first time I read this and got to the part where Sarai tells Lazlo, "Good people do all the things bad people do. It's just that when they do them, they call it justice." I had to stop reading, copy the quote down, and just sit for a minute. And Laini Taylor drops lines like that everywhere in this book! It was quite delightful for me.

I also remembered how much I loved the complexity of this story. The relationship between the citizens of Weep and the surviving godspawn was especially fascinating to me because both sides have very valid feelings about what happened. The mesarthim very much terrorized and traumatized Weep for two centuries, so it's hard to feel bad about Eril-Fane murdering them. It's really the murder of the baby godspawn that is the sticking point. Because I understand why he did it, but I still can't help but wonder how those children might have grown up if they'd been sent somewhere else, where they could be raised with love (because that was never going to happen in Weep and after the trauma those people went through, raising the godspawn would only be inflicting further trauma on them). So I understand Eril-Fane's motivation and don't think he was really wrong in his actions, but we also get Sarai and Minya's views, and their feelings about this situation also make sense and are justified. This whole situation is very complicated and messy and it's one where there is no solution that will make everyone happy, which is very difficult to deal with, but it's handled very adeptly here.

Despite all the things I enjoyed in about this book, I did have a hard time getting into it and staying in it. Part of this, I think, is that I don't really care for full on fantasy worlds, which this is. It's nothing against this book or fantasy in general, it's just hard for me personally to read, and I acknowledge that and read accordingly. Beyond that though, this book was just very slow to me, especially at the beginning. The scene where Thyon Nero requisitions Lazlo's books about Weep spanned far too many chapters, for example, because there was a lot of backstory and exposition that got in the way. It was all interesting, and I know why it was included, but because the writing style itself is very slow, all of these extra scenes in the middle of the the action made parts of this really drag for me. This technique also made it difficult to remember what was happening in the present, even with the narrative clues, purely because there was so much other information I had to absorb. And this continued throughout the book. The last 50 or so pages were probably my favorite, because so much happened, and it all happened in a much faster pace. It was exciting and I wish the rest of the book had been more like that, because the story itself is very interesting.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic friendship, Body horror, Confinement, and Blood

Moderate: Child death, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Grief, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Slavery, Violence, and Xenophobia

Minor: Sexual violence, Sexual assault, War, and Rape