Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Gothikana

a deliciously dark gothic romance 🖤

I finally decided to pick up Gothikana after being interested in another book called Nocticadia. And since I’m putting myself on a book buying ban, Gothikana seemed like the perfect book that would scratch that itch in my brain I had for a dark romance, dark academia, student/professor type of book. 🫦📖

With that in mind, I had an enjoyable time reading this book. It was just the type of book I was in the mood for. I admit the writing was cringy at times and a little extra when it came to love scenes, but I didn’t mind that much because I was actually invested in the characters and their story. Vad and Corvina grew on me and I loved their deep love for each other. At first I was a bit disappointed that it would be all lust for the sake of the smut, but as you read you discover their deep connection toward each other. I loved them. 💜

This is one of those books that are heavy on the vibes. If you want to escape to a gloomy castle on a mountain where bad things happen and the main characters have a lot of sex , then you’ll enjoy this book. 😂

Honestly, I found the plot really interesting as well. It was suspenseful and a bit creepy at times, however, I’m a bit disappointed that one of the big mysteries didn’t get an answer. 😩
I’m hoping that we’ll get a sequel eventually because I need to have more answers. Despite some plot points left unanswered, the big reveal at the end was actually really good and I didn’t see it coming. 😲

You’ll love this book if you enjoy:
🐦‍⬛ gothic haunted castles
🌳 wandering in the woods
👻 preternatural events
🔮 unique main female protagonists
🩶 dark and mysterious male protagonists
🎓 student/ professor relationships (she’s 22 and he’s 28)
🌶️ spicee

edit: changed my rating to a 3.5

trigger warning ⚠️ sa, suicide, mental illness, murder, explicit sexual content

Content Warnings

writingbugsal's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced

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

4.25

Content Warnings

biancaneve5's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-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

0.25

Content Warnings

btwnprintedpgs's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-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? It's complicated

3.0

The mystery in this book kept me interested, but the twist wasn't for me. One part surprised me, but the other part seemed reductive and trite.

As a whole, didn't love the romance, but that's because it's very lusty and not much "get to know you" happened. The demi in me just couldn't get on board with it all. The sexy parts seemed unrealistic at times too, but that's a whole other conversation. Also, I felt like there were just a lot of questions I never got answers to, and while the characters might've been fine with it, I wanted to know as it felt like a huge part of the mystery of it all.

In the end, I was interested throughout, but a lot of it was just a miss for me as things came to light. Great for gothic girlies who love when the LI calls the MC a "good girl" and enjoys a little bit of a psychological/paranormal thriller. I am not that type of girly.

Rep: Parent with schizophrenia and dementia

TW: blood, suicide, murder, death, torture, fire, sexual content, kidnapping; mentions abandonment, death of a parent, bullying

Content Warnings

raequigley's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

Content Warnings

direguard's review against another edition

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

5.0

Content Warnings

viselik's review against another edition

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

Please DO NOT read this book if any of the following topics trigger or upset you as the book does not handle these topics with care.
SCHIZOPHRENIA, SUICIDE, SELF-HARM, ABUSE, IFFY SEXUAL SITUATIONS OR INCEST

I would have done lower stars if I could. This book honestly handles the topics inside of it really poorly. If I wasn't so stubborn about my rule about finishing a book, I would have put this down after chapter 10.

I won't really go in-depth here as I'm not even comfortable remembering the book fully, would highly recommend The Book Leo's video here on this book as she states a lot of what I feel about this book but I'll give a quick rundown of my final thoughts on it.

Spoiler

The main cast of characters all feel quite childlike at times, I'm not quite sure about it. Even the teacher character Vad Deverell feels like this a lot of the time. Even more so on how jealous he gets over Troy or Jax who are both around 19 years old. Corvina (whose name is literally a fish) I can't even get started at how childlike she seemed, or just how unaware of the danger she could be in.
Also, why did it take until around chapter 16 to find out Vad's age? Why is the author hiding it? Not to mention it's only said once, compared to the several times the student's ages are given out or even the amount of times we are told Corvina is in her early 20s.

The author does state that she made Vad's character vague but having that doesn't excuse how one-dimensional he felt most of the time. Even when we are finding out about his backstory it didn't feel like it was helping his character, at times I even preferred now knowing as I was constantly thinking by the end if he was going to kill someone like he did his grandfather.

The main mystery of the book, the Black Ball held every 5 years and each time it's on someone goes missing... well this is never answered. Instead, we get an incest scene about our love interest Vad's crazy family member who wants to have his kids so they would have good 'devil' genes and could run the school. This same family member has caused at least 2 people to jump off the roof and tried to get our MC to do it as well, she does this via a drug... Yeah. I would highly not recommend this book to anyone.

The several sex scenes in this feel rather poorly written, there are a few moments floating around the internet about some of the lines from this book but as I've read I've noticed a few more. Quite a
lot of them are all in the sex scenes and their incessant need to mention madness, but this madness is never really described.

Another thing I noticed about this book, we get a lot of being told but not having it described at all. Like the music from chapter 2 I believe, it's said to be "Haunting. Eerie. Ethereal." though nothing else is really described about it. We don't even know it's a piano till we see the guy who is playing it.

If you are looking for sex scenes, please just go look at the porn without plot tag on AO3 you could probably find even better sex scenes without having to pay for them.

Content Warnings

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