Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Winterkeep

Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

Winterkeep by Kristin Cashore

26 reviews

imds's review against another edition

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Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.25

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lizziaha's review against another edition

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Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

I love the additions to the Graceling world in this book! I especially enjoyed the Keeper(?) perspective and the interactions with the silbercows. I also thought that Lovisa as a character was very complex, and it was refreshing to see a teen in YA acting like a teenager instead of a small adult. very excited to pick up the next installment!

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lubotomy's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

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talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful mysterious medium-paced

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? It's complicated

3.5

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g_c_geeks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

4.0

Love this series and really enjoyed seeing an expansion of the world we already knew of.
The addition of a new magic system and whole new set of political relations was really cool. I am always a fan of political intrigue.
I also really enjoy the different approaches to relationships that all the characters have, and I particularly enjoyed the difference in attitudes regarding sex. It’s really cool to see these topics discussed, however briefly, in YA.

However I do think the pacing was a little off in this book. Some plot lines were dragged out too much, others not enough. I also think the structure could be improved upon with a multiple POV story because it was not as clear as it could have been. And the switching of the POVs was not always at the best time imo.

Omg also I’m so confused at who has what skin colour in these books. Maybe I’m just dumb or maybe it’s because of conflicting cover art but I stg some characters were described as very pale and now all of a sudden they have brown skin?? I now just look at fanart and trust the general consensus there haha but ig the character descriptions do confuse me sometimes.

Overall I still enjoyed it and will pick up the next book when it comes out. Just probably won’t reread this one as much as the others, particularly Graceling and Fire.

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megansreading's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated

2.0

This was such a disappointment. It’s a large break in tone and setting from the rest of the series—if you enjoyed Graceling, I’m not sure this is the book for you. I just need to ask: Of all the stories in the Graceling world, why did this one need to be told???

Here are the good bits:

Surprisingly, I enjoyed reading from the fox’s POV. He had the clearest motivations of all the characters. (Though I’m still not sure why he was heroically wanting to help Louisa, who despised him.)
I enjoyed Hava and the exploration of her grace. It felt right to give her more page time she wasn’t able to have in Bitterblue and the different graces have always been one of my favorite parts of this world.
Lastly,
Though I know others disagree, I did enjoy Giddon and Bitterblue’s romance. It felt like they genuinely cared and relied on one another—even if they were separated for a lot of the book.

Now for the bad bits:

This book takes forever to get started. I think I was around 150 pages in before it felt like things were actually happening. This boring pace continues for the rest of the book. It felt like too much was being thrown at me at once with no indication of where the plot was actually going. There was no clear goal and motivation that I could point to. And I’m not even sure everything was resolved by the end.
Which brings me to the large cast of characters that were so forgettable. It’s a good thing there was a cast list in the back of the book because the side characters were so interchangeable that I never remembered who was who. I was missing the deep characterization from the previous books. Most of the side characters I didn’t hate…because I honestly didn’t know them well enough to care about them at all.
Lovisa was one of my least favorite protagonists I’ve read in a long time. She was hypocritical, self-centered (except for when she threw in mentions of her brothers so we would have sympathy for her), and just rude. I understand she comes from a rough home life (see the next section on themes), but she did not seem to make any effort at all to be kind to people who were kind to her. I was sympathetic but not at all empathetic. She outright admits that she uses people for sex and she has next to no healthy relationships. There is not a single character, aside from her brothers that are just personality-less tools, that Lovisa cares about. It’s hard to be invested in her when she doesn’t have anyone in her life that she’s connected with. This also makes me not want to care about the other characters, as mentioned previously. She could be interesting as a side character, but it was not enjoyable to be in her perspective.
There were so many themes going on in this book that it felt like none of them were properly explored. In her previous books, the author did a fabulous job exploring the effects/consequences of abuse and manipulative parental relationships. But that even seemed to fall flat for me.
Normally I don’t bring this up in reviews, but let’s talk about the sex for a moment. For one, the on-page sex scenes were too explicit and numerous to allow this book to be YA. To be brief, Lovisa has a super unhealthy relationship with sex, and it is never condemned. It’s reasonable considering her upbringing that she would have an unhealthy relationship with sex, but it’s never portrayed as wrong that she uses people for sex and uses sex as a distraction/harmful coping mechanism for trauma. Sex has real emotional consequences, especially when used in an unhealthy way. Additionally, this is a huge break in tone from the previous books—and it is largely unnecessary to the plot.
Along with themes,
In one of Bitterblue’s POV chapters it’s mentioned twice that Lovisa seems to be contemplating suicide. This suicidal ideation was NEVER mentioned in any other chapters, not even in Lovisa’s POV. It didn’t even feel like a natural direction of Lovisa’s personality. It felt like a weird deviation and like throwaway lines about an incredibly sensitive, deep topic. We get one mention at the very end of the book from Lovisa about it, but overall it either needed to be developed more or cut completely.
There is also one character who is entirely replaceable/unnecessary.
There is not one thing Katu did that couldn’t have been done by someone else. Since everyone assumes he’s dead anyway, it isn’t like we’re eagerly hoping to find him. Plus we don’t even get any page time with him, so I don’t care that he’s missing. And are we going to pretend that Katu, with all the time he supposedly spent with Lovisa and the boys, didn’t know they were living in an abusive home??? I feel like the catalyst for this story would have been better if Saf or Prince Sky had been taken by the airship instead. I would have cared more and so would’ve Bitterblue.

There is probably more I could say but this will suffice. I’m really sad that this novel didn’t expand on this world in a way that I enjoyed. I almost wish the author had created this in a different, standalone world since there is such a large deviation in setting and themes.

I will not be rereading this book and I will probably not read any of the following books in this series.

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cepbreed's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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

4.25

I'M SO PROUD OF MYSELF I TOTALLY CALLED IT AFTER READING THE LAST BOOK!!!

Bitterblue and Giddon have my entire heart and each chapter of longing and want made me fall for them more. The pining was beautifully done and the set up in the last book, even if unintentional, made them an instant favorite of mine. Soulmates don't always need to find each other immediately they just need to have their "its always been you" moment.

God I love Cashore's ability to flesh out characters in her entirely unique way. Each interaction is purposeful, each conversation adds layers to the personal narratives of the characters involved, it's masterful. I've never felt so close to a character in a fantasy novel as I do with Lovisa. She is remarkable and vulnerable. Just that is enough to inspire me. Thank you Kristen Cashore for this series that I never thought I'd love so hard. I'd like to travel back in time and simultaneously punch and hug the person I was when I picked up the first book. She was naive in expressing a dislike for the series, but wise to continue on despite that initial opinion. I'll remember these books forever.

Ranking of the books: Bitterblue, Winterkeep, Fire, Graceling

Song:

Mirrorball - Taylor Swift

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mcgildey's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful 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? Yes

5.0

Gorgeous! As a lifelong fan of the Graceling books, I picked this up as soon as I could! It took me a while to pick it up, I was worried that it might ruin my view of one of my favourite series if it was bad. I should have trusted Cashore! It had everything I loved about the series and more! Stunning worldbuilding, immersive writing, and great characters (I especially loved the sections exploring non-human povs!) This book got me out of a reading dry spell and was a great isolation companion. This is a very biased review, but I highly recommend Winterkeep regardless!!

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miciahsreads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious reflective sad 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

3.75

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merenguita's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious fast-paced

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

5.0

There is something really intresting about setting up a mistry in a fantasy book like this author does in all of the series. In this particular book we get to discover a brand new world with new characters while still seeing some of the characters we know and love from previous books.
This is also true for the narrator, there are so many narrators! One of the first is Giddon and I honeslty didn't expect to like him that much, i always looked forward to his parts. I think his character arc flourishes in this installment and it's quite beautiful to see his sweetness.
As always there is some romance, although it's not the main plot and there are more intresting elements to the book. For exaple Lovisa and her family

specially once everything has unfolded and we can see the inner struggle, the conflict with her own identity and how, eventually, she takes her power back

The only thing I would add is that I hope we can see more LGBTQ+ relationships between the main characters at some point in the future

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