Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - Caraval

Reviews tagging 'Sexual harassment'

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

25 reviews

isabelgnagler's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

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

2.5

It was an enjoyable read. The descriptions lend themselves much better to a screen adaptation than a book as the author continuously gets caught up on descriptions that detail the story. Scarlett is not a bad FMC. Ending was predictable.

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ecq234's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted fast-paced

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

3.0

It was really good until around the end where everything got a little too complicated just wrapped up really quickly in a pretty a bow at the end. I know there’s more books, so hopefully those books answer my question, but honestly

I wouldn’t have forgiven Tella and Julian so easily like girl, they lied to you and put you through hell for the past week for what????

still a really fun book though. Even if I got complicated, I enjoyed reading it

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bonez_x's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful lighthearted mysterious sad 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? Yes

4.0

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rachelmerrie's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

2.0

This was incredibly painful to read. The main character was so frustrating and naive. The whole theme is “nothing is real” and she prided herself in believing she was the perfect person for the game because of her upbringing, yet her personality and emotions kept getting in her way. Things kept falling into her lap.. she did absolutely nothing to deserve the things she was given.

“Are you sure it wasn’t an illusion” “I’m POSITIVE” was repeated over and over again 🤦🏻‍♀️

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melodyramirez's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.75

The mystery and plot twists are pretty intriguing and fun but the writing is kindof cheesy and the author really over uses similes. The conclusion is also infodump-y.

personally I would never forgive them for any of that

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freckles's review against another edition

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adventurous 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? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

I just don't knooow. I really wanted to like it but the romance felt weirdly horny and I got weird vibes all the time and the resolution at the end felt super unsatisfying. I dunno.

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mayaism_01's review against another edition

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adventurous 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? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

The most engaging part of this story is easily (and pretty unsurprisingly) the Caraval, the lush descriptions of a world that reads as a combination of Baz Luhrmann's 'The Great Gatsby'-type party and Alice in Wonderland, I wish more of the book was just about enjoying how cool it would be to attend the Caraval. The game, and its constant reminders not to be deceived by Caraval's performers and performances, was a fun way to have you constantly second-guessing what to believe in this story and I truly think this plot had the potential to be a strong foundation for an amazing story.

This leads me to this novel's biggest shortcoming - the characters. I did not care at all for a single character in this story, Scarlett is foolish (and fell in love in 4 days - oy vey) and Donetella is barely given time to be fleshed out (despite being the more interesting sister), the most compelling thing about either of them was their relationship as sisters but even that doesn't seem fully realized. Julian seems like a halfway-decent character because he's been given the most interesting motivations and backstory by far but everything else falls flat. The main villain began as something that could've been interesting only to end up being cartoonish.

The ending has me intrigued though so I'm tempted to try the next one and hope for more improvement on Garber's end with the characters, considering it's seemingly following Donatella I feel like this could get very interesting.

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eatingbrains's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No

2.25

This book was very much whimsical nonsense tied up in a mystery that was reminiscent of a studio ghibli movie. You question what is real and what is not, if what has happened actually did happen.

There was enough mystery and world building to keep me interested in reading more, though the characters were a bit one dimensional they managed to hold my attention.

Other books I've read with this vibe did not have strong enough characters to keep me engaged and since this was a debut novel it has a lot of promise for what comes next.

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kcmg710's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious 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? No

4.0

WARNING // Minor spoilers like baby ones I'm sorry 🤗

I really loved this book so much, the writing as a whole was so beautiful it was like a feast for my eyes and some of the descriptions/metaphors I re-read over and over again because they were so beautiful.

Loved the characters and the development (well Scarlett’s - I’m assuming we will see the others in the rest of the trilogy).

Like in the beginning Scarlett really bugged me

with how obsessed she was with her sister and getting married and all that palava I actually (stupidly) thought she was quite boring and I understand because of her trauma and stuff and in reflection I was probably abit too harsh on her just because of my views on marriage but that doesn’t mean that other peoples are wrong // I saw on TikTok one of the characters from little women? Say something similar and thought she has a frickin point actually) and seeing how brave and resilient she was in the end and strong for standing up to her father and going after her actual dreams (adventure and stuff)

was truly amazing. 👏🏼👏🏼

Even though I loved this book and it didn’t really have many faults but it’s just not quite 5*for me and I can’t figure out why ☹️

As you can tell from my rambling I am not a writer but I hope my review was helpful
(I also don’t know if I’ve used the spoiler tags properly so sorry in advance)

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skeptic_hecate's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

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

2.5

This has more twists than the Amazon river, except that, unlike the Amazon river, the twists here are pointless and full of plotholes. I didn't like the protagonist at all, Scarlett Dragma reads like an anime filler episode monologue:
"I should do 'x', but if I do 'x' then I cannot do 'y', but perhaps people will expect me to do 'y' so I shouldn't do 'y', unless when two dimensional and pointless side character hinted that doing 'x' is better..." and so on.

The only character I liked was Donatella, and she was in a few pages of the book. The decisions taken by the characters are very stupid to the point of being random, and the clues are designed to be solved by something that happens to appear out of thin air rather than forshadowed.

The climax is meh, there are no real consequences to the actions of the characters. I had to force myself to finish this book. The outfits and setting are nice.

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