Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

28 reviews

kimberlina82's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious reflective 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

Absolute perfection!  From beginning to end! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, War, and Injury/Injury detail

czoltak's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Panic attacks/disorders, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Fire/Fire injury

kat1105's review

adventurous emotional lighthearted mysterious relaxing 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Sexual content and War

u2u's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

4.75

Loved this man, not usually into romances but this is more adventurous than anything. It’s slow at first and takes some time to think about what u have just read but besides that. 9/10

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death of parent, and Alcohol

Minor: Animal death, Infertility, Violence, and Pregnancy

jaynovara's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Torture, and Blood

Moderate: Confinement, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Medical content, Kidnapping, and Pregnancy

kyliereads341's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-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? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Torture and Murder

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders and Pregnancy

baearles's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-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? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Torture, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical content, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Toxic relationship, Stalking, Murder, Pregnancy, and War

bedtimesandbooks's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Torture, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child death, Mental illness, and Pregnancy

katvou's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, and Alcohol

Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Torture, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders and Pregnancy

bookishchef's review against another edition

mysterious slow-paced

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

1.5

This book is like Twilight. 
But without the love triangle.
And somehow even more toxic.

You thought Edward stalking Bella was creepy? 
Meet Matthew Clermont! He is actually mentally and physically abusive to our bland Mary Sue protagonist named Diana.

If you're Matthew, life is easy.

Diana has a panic attack? Threaten her life. 
Diana is feeling scared? Threaten her life.
Diana is feeling horny? Threaten her life.

Why? Because you just cannot help yourself of course. After all, it is sooooo hot when men treat women like

A. fragile objects they're supposed to control and protect. 
B. things to literally kill.

This book perpetrates the idea that men cannot help themselves from abusing, controling, and commanding women. 
Worst thing is, that every time Diana goes against Matthew's wishes, she is immediately punished by the plot. Which only confirms that women are supposed to listen to the men in their lives according to this book.

I have no clue how I, the reader, was supposed to find any of this romantic. All of the scenes were either highly uncomfortable or straight up abusive.

The excuse of "he just can't help himself" is as old as time and has been used time and time again to excuse shitty behaviour from men. 
And Diana, the MC, decides that this excuse is not an excuse at all. She seems to think this is actually the way the world works. She doesn't even take the horrible "I can fix him" attitude that so many romance MCs take. Instead she just completely accepts Matthew as the toxic asshole he is and gives up every part of her life to listen to him and conform to his ideas of an ideal wife. 

So yeah this book stole the toxicity from Twilight and made it 10x worse. 

You know what else it stole? 

THE WEIRD BABY PLOTLINE 

Yup, you heard me correctly. 
This author really looked at Renesmee and went "wow that's such a cool plot point". 
Remember how Bella wasn't supposed to be able to get pregnant because Ed was a vampire? Well, same goes for Diana in this story. For a solid 80% of the book, we hear nothing about pregnancy rates between witches and vampires. (Diana is a witch and Matthew is a vampire)

Matthew refuses to have penetrative sex because of *plot*, and Diana gets frustrated because of this. And then suddenly out of NOWHERE it is revealed that witches and vampires can't have babies together BUT Diana has *special* DNA which means she is able to conceive with Matthew. Matthew supposedly didn't know this, so his aversion to penetrative sex was completely unrelated. 
Even so, this entire plotpoint seems to exist to make Matthew right once again, and to rip off Twilight. 

Truly do not understand why this gets 4+ stars on Goodreads.

ALSO OMG WINE GETS MENTIONED MORE THAN THE MC'S NAME I STG

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Confinement, Misogyny, Torture, Grief, and Pregnancy

Minor: Child death