Reviews with content warning for Confinement - משהו מופלא

Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

משהו מופלא by Alexis Hall, אלכסיס הול

15 reviews

suzreadsalot's review against another edition

Started out silly and fun but wound up being abusive and enraging. I’ll never find out if bonny apologizes to Valentine because I cannot listen to another minute of this so I’ll just write my own ending.

Utterly disappointing

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readingrenbo's review against another edition

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I had to DNF this at 39% which I am so upset about because I loved Boyfriend Material and Husband Material and based on the description I was expecting to love this - and I did not love this.

I was promised a good time and there are just no good times to be had in this book. From minute one the gaslighting and emotional abuse directed towards Valentine make the reader as awkward and uncomfortable as they make Valentine and it just gets worse the more you read. The minute they tied him up and all turned on him even though he had done nothing wrong was it for me, it showed just how much of an asshole every other character is.

Belle is the absolute worst she is a lying, selfish, manipulative twit undeserving of any sympathy. And Bonny is no better for constantly backing her bullshit. I can't stand to watch Valentine fall in love with someone who can abuse him and support abuse of him so easily so I'm walking away because I know the last 61% of this book will end up pissing me off.

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goldensisyphus's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted 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

3.5

Poor Valentine. He really deserved better. Both Bonnie and Belle shat all over him. Valentine is the only likeable character. No wait, Belle's cross-dressing lover Peggy is lovely.
I almost DNFed this book so many times because of the outrageous way the MMC Valentine was being treated.

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f18's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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galleytrot's review against another edition

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

3.75

READ: Mar 2023

FORMAT: Digital

BRIEF SUMMARY:

In this historical fiction/romance set in 1800s England, Valentine (the Duke of Malvern) feels he’s upholding his father’s wishes by asking Arabella for her hand in marriage. When it turns out she’s not as thrilled by the idea as he’d anticipated, her twin brother Bonny drags Valentine along on a chase from Surrey to Dover in an attempt to intercept the runaway fiancée on her flight to the Americas. The twins are both far more of a handful than Valentine ever could have imagined, and Bonny opens Valentine's eyes to a world he had no idea was even possible.

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 4 / 5⭐

Boy, what an adventure. This book’s got everything: carriage chases; daring escapes; duels; kidnappings; torrid affairs; battles of wit; bees galore; a pair of devoted fanfiction authors; and, a rather surprising amount of peach feasting.

I’ve got to hand it to Valentine. For all that he is quick to lose his temper and is doing his best to live a quiet, comfortable life out of the eye of scrutiny and controversy, he sure does stick to it when I would have turned away and washed my hands of the entire situation. Before Bonny could even get him out of the house, the twins had completely exhausted my social meter and left me thinking, “Nope, time to go home.” I lost count of how many events in their grand adventure I though would be the straw to break the camel’s back. But they just kept on going.

This book is an absolute cartoon of a historical fiction. Nearly every character is a caricature, all of them over-the-top. Most are theatrical and thriving on the adventure. A small handful are just along for the ride. Peggy might be the only sane character. I like Peggy.

TECHNICAL / PRODUCTION: 3.5 / 5⭐
I’ll be honest, I’m more inclined to categorize this ‘historical fiction’ as a fantasy instead. Hall notes at the beginning of the book that linguistic liberties are taken, and just about everyone in the book is queer. This is not an exaggeration. Valentine leaves his comfortable world that operates precisely as one would expect a gray-and-drab-1800’s-England to operate, and he stumbles into this explosive, colorful, high-octane alternate reality that shakes the foundation of everything he thought he knew to be true.

This book was both exhausting and frustrating to my poor little comfortable, introverted mind. I didn’t dislike it, but I did need to take a lot of breathers. My own patience was tested too many times. A DNF was never on the table (this book is still fun, for all the characters were tedious) but there were points where I wished it was. Repetition was used a number of times for comical purposes, and it mostly hit, but there was one scene in particular where I had to skip dialogue more times than I ought to have because of the repetitive content.

I’ve read a fair number of Hall’s books now and I have adored just about all of them. This one might be the one I liked the least, and it’s still not even close to terrible; at least, not compared to some of the other authors I’ve been reading recently. Something unusual I did encounter here was the occasional typo or grammatical error, and a number of clunky dialogue choices unrelated to the inclusion of modern phrasings. From what I can recall, most of Hall’s works I’ve encountered have been extremely well-put-together, so it was a bit of a surprise – enough for me to take note.

FINAL THOUGHTS - OVERALL: 3.75 / 5⭐

Read this book. It’s an experience, and it’s got a lot going for it. It’s far from perfect but it’s still a good time.

This book has representation for gays, lesbians, genderqueer or -fluid individuals, and demisexuals/demiromantics. Multiple badass women do badass things. There is at least one dark-skinned character described.

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

This book contains: theatrical, insensitive, and dismissive comments about suicide; many references to passed-away parents; homophobic rationalizations; alcohol use; potential creepy crawlies (bees, mentions of spiders, an upsetting number of tadpoles); restraint/confinement (character tied to chair, locked in a cellar); infidelity (kind of a gray area on this one but also not really); and, gun violence resulting in a shooting.

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kaitlinnoodles's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted slow-paced

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

4.0

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maregred's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging funny sad medium-paced

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

2.0

The Tarleton twins are insufferable and humorless and Catherine Moreland would NEVER.

Also I just felt bad for Valentine the whole time. He was victim blamed for getting shot, and for breaking a chair he was tied up in… that poor dude deserved so much better.

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wilybooklover's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

3.0

As a farce, this was ridiculously funny and camp and over the top. As a romance... it just wasn't quite there for me. Valentine was an idiot one too many times and the twins verged on too mean one too many times as well (especially Arabella). If both of those aspects were pared back just a touch then I think I'd have loved this.

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ehmannky's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

If you leave literally everything you know of the Regency at the door and expect a silly romp, you will have fun reading this book. It took me a few chapters to be able to do that, but once I was in, I was in. I think that the point of this book is less about the setting and more about the process of coming out, and if I was a bit more of a baby gay I probably would have gotten a lot more out of this read. I thought that at times Hall was really beating the point into us about Valentine needing to accept himself, but it was fine. Honestly, I had fun with this silly, silly read. This book is fluff, although I did find some of the romantic scenes quite moving.

I did honestly find Arabella incredibly annoying though. I get she doesn't want to marry Valentine, but, like, she's annoying. I hope Peggy gets someone better.

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shaipanda's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted fast-paced

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

4.5

This book is absolutely fucking ridiculous but I loved it
It’s so over the top and so insane but in all the best ways imo

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