Reviews tagging 'Sexual harassment'

Dark Lover by J.R. Ward

16 reviews

novellearts's review against another edition

1.0

Honestly I feel like I read a different book than everyone else here. This got rated so highly and I just didn’t care for it at all. The alpha male qualities of this book had me cringing and rolling my eyes. The names Wrath, Phury, and Rhage just felt so juvenile. The insanely unrealistic sex scenes drove me insane. Everyone was constantly having an orgasm and over the smallest things! This story felt to me like a teenage boy wrote it. I was truly surprised to realize it was a woman author.

Oh, and can’t forget to mention the casual transphobia in this book! It came out of nowhere and was so incredibly unnecessary. That’s where this story started going downhill for me. Once an author uses their story to unnecessarily start hating on a group of people, I lose interest and respect.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Rape and Transphobia

arkwen452's review against another edition

Why are all the theme in these books about guys getting their rocks off and women being assaulted or needing to be protected??!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Blood

Moderate: Sexual assault, Violence, and Sexual harassment

witcheep's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

4.0

I've first read this book about ten years ago (and it was written almost 20 years ago!), and on this reread the story was as captivating as I remembered. Nowadays it might be put into the spicy romantacy genre, and as such it fits multiple popular tropes (e. g. mates, touch-her-and-die) and feels delightfully multidimensional and fresh: the FMC isn't a helpless damsel in distress even though she is introduced to a whole new world of vampires and needs guidance.

The worldbuilding is interesting and the plethora of characters is well-rounded with interesting multidimensional personalities. Especially disability is written very respectfully as a normal part of the characters' lives into the plot. I think I'll reread the series further soon.

It is worth mentioning, though, that some of the wordings and mindsets especially around lgbtq+ community (

brief mentions/slurs in dialoque

) and women's standing in the society (both in human and vampire ones; women characters are either

innocent as virgins, mothers/spouses or whores

) feels very prejudiced and condemnatory at times.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Sexual content, Violence, Murder, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Cursing, Death, Misogyny, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, and Alcohol

Minor: Drug use, Gun violence, Self harm, Slavery, Torture, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, and Classism

jamiebrito's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? No

1.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

mrsmishler's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional 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? No

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Sexism, Sexual assault, Police brutality, and Sexual harassment

wanderlustsleeping's review against another edition

Couldn’t keep going. It was slowing down my reading. Just not my thing! I was intrigued a couple times, and I rolled my eyes a couple times. Came to the conclusion that this series is just not for me, and that’s ok!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault and Sexual content

Moderate: Sexual harassment

glutenfreemaggie's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

rachelgreenreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense 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

3.5

This was really high quality garbage. Like, it was very cheesy and trashy but the writing was good and the story was well done. There were some things that should have been very cringey, but it went past cringe and into camp, so those bits were actually hilarious. 

But I thought the relationship between the MCs developed well, there was some good hurt/comfort, and the disability representation was surprisingly well done. 

I hated Butch tbh, but maybe I was supposed to? I’ve heard he develops throughout the series. Overall very enjoyable read, but would only recommend to friends tolerant of the cringe/ generally some offensive stuff that just didn’t age well. 

Ps. There’s a lot of sexual assault threat/ attempts floating throughout the book. None from close characters, but still enough to give someone the ick for sure. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Sexual assault, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Sexism, Police brutality, Medical content, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Torture and Pregnancy

There’s a lot of sexual assault threat/ attempts floating throughout the book. None from close characters, but still enough to give someone the ick for sure. There’s also a lot of misogyny and chauvinism

mostly by Butch, but the way most of the vamps talk about women is not great

. There is also a lot of whorephobia and violence against sex workers in the book.

by the villain(s) but also one of the inner circle, Zsadist, though his actions are not confirmed.

breesmith2364's review against another edition

adventurous medium-paced

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

2.5

Some people really love this book but it just didn’t do it for me. In fact, it took me a week to force myself through it (I’m usually a read it in one day person). I didn’t feel like the main couple actually even liked anything about each other. It was just sexual attraction (steam wasn’t detailed) and then poof they “love” each other. The character back stories were cliche. The style was hard to get into because it constantly jumped around and focused on the perspective of too many characters. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault and Sexual harassment

The sexual assault and sexual harassment is not done by either of the main characters. Some of the violence is brushed off because it was against prostitutes… like that made it not a big deal.

elwyn_k's review against another edition

dark mysterious fast-paced

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

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault

Moderate: Gore, Gun violence, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual violence, Police brutality, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Drug use