Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

The Words by Ashley Jade

6 reviews

chainsiren's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Dementia, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

alilbitofeveryth1ng's review against another edition

medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Dementia, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Abandonment, and Alcohol

Minor: Mental illness, Police brutality, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail

aalysad's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was absolutely perfect! The enemies to lovers trope was done so well and the spice 🤌🏻😍 there were so many emotions I experienced with this book. I loved every character so much. Every one of them had so much depth. The book was long, but I didn’t want it to end! The writing was truly beautiful. Also, I listened to the audio along with it and was not disappointed. 😏

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Self harm, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Abandonment, and Alcohol

megallenbooks's review against another edition

emotional 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? Yes

4.5

 Thank goodness I could make this book work into a prompt because I absolutely was not thinking of my challenge when I downloaded onto my kindle and inhaled in an entire afternoon. I was entirely motivated by readwshelby over on Tiktok and thinking if a book got her that worked up I wanted a part of it.

This story is told in two parts; the first follows the FMC (Lenon) and MMC (Phoenix) in high school and the start of their burgeoning relationship. I have to say I thought I had crossed an age threshold where stories, particularly romances, set in high school held no sway over me but I think reading them as a flash back that sets up the adult relationship for me might be a new catnip for me. Something about seeing the trauma that highschool is for so many people laid bare on the page, knowing we are going to see how it affects this person as an adult is deeply engaging.

Teen Phoenix and Lennon are pretty endearing too, particularly teen Phoenix, because you can see two sides of his personality at war with each other, the ass and the dream and how they war with each other and how they are tried by Lennon is kind of lovely. Likewise, seeing the seeds of the kickass heroine Lennon is going to grow up to be is also endearing.

Flash forward 4 years and we're into part 2, Phoenix is a rockstar and Lennon has found an inner confidence that we were dying for her to get in Part one. Their relationship has broken down in a big way (won't say how due to spoilers) but safe to say when Phoenix's manager hires Lennon to be Phoenix's sober companion, no one is worried that he will sleep with her and scare her away like the others. Let the force proximity games begin.

There was a lot to like about this book. Jade has great character voices and the angst and tension was just perfect. This was very spicy (🌶🌶🌶🌶) without feeling like erotica. The world building and secondary characters were great (side note: I have read she's not going to give Rock his own book which is a shame because I found him to be the most intriguing secondary character)

So why not 5 stars? A couple of this bugged me and I would have like them to change; the first was the short amount of time between part 1 and 2. Sure 4 years sounds like a lot, but given Phoenix had to form a band, record an album, win grammies, develop a serious substance abuse problem, it seems very fast. Likewise the amount of personal growth that Lennon went through is a lot to jam into 4 years. Having the characters be in their late 20s would have been even more impactful.

The other bit that didn't do it for me was the ending, the pacing was off and some parts dragged and others were so quick and out of left field I got a bit of whiplash.

That said, this was a great angsty read and a recommend. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Fatphobia, Infidelity, Dementia, and Death of parent

marybsimp's review against another edition

dark emotional funny reflective tense fast-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? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Medical trauma, Car accident, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, and Alcohol

criticalbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny inspiring tense medium-paced

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Self harm, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Dementia, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism