Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Enraizados

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Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

Enraizados by Naomi Novik

23 reviews

lararosemary's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.75

Wow, reading this was a rollercoaster but you know what, I did like it overall.

There are some things that I don’t like about this book so let’s get those out of the way. First, the Dragon. He is a big selling-point for the book, yet he ends up being very uninteresting.

Taking 17 year old girls to your tower for 10 years is already super disturbing but the explanation for this did not satisfy me at all and did not make it any less strange. Then there is also the super weird thing with forcing Nieszka to wear those dresses and also being very hostile for no reason, why are you, as a 153 year old man, beefing with a 17 year old girl? While we are on the subject, why are you having ‘relations’ with a 17 year old girl in the middle of a battle?! This really pulled me out of the story unfortunately. I don’t like the dragon and the ‘romance’ did not do this story any good, it would have been fine (or better?) without it. I’m glad that is was not explored any further.

Also, some concepts were introduced but never explored further. For example,

Nieszka faints and she is then told not to do any magic for a week but it doesn’t affect the story much. Nieszka is assaulted by Marek but it is just never mentioned again, was that just done to mark Marek as a bad guy? Why could Nieszka not get a wizard name? The bestiary book felt a little disconnected too.

Overall, a lot of things were left to your own imagination.

The characters are not super deep but there were still some characters that I liked. I really liked Kasia, she was very comforting. I also liked the main character, yes she was a ‘special snowflake’ or a Mary Sue or whatever, but since none of the characters were really fleshed out it wasn’t super distracting. Also, I liked how she ended up being able to support herself, that she fought for what she wanted and that she was a little stubborn.

I also liked the ‘journey’ aspect of the book. The first time they

entered the Wood I really started to enjoy the story. It reminded me of Tolkien’s Mirkwood. I liked the castle scenes a little less but the Wood scenes were enjoyable to read, especially the finale.

I also really liked the whimsical fairytale/folklore feel of the story, though we did not get a lot of world-building it still felt mystical. The magic system of flowing and dancing with the words and songs was also fun to me!

I ended up rating this a 3.75 out of 5. I feel like it did not reach it’s full potential and it had some flaws but I had fun reading this and that is what matters. The ending was satisfying enough (

in my interpretation Nieszka does not settle for Sarkan

) and it reads smoothly.

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theoldestbennetsister's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful mysterious sad

3.5

I had a whole long thing written out which got deleted. Basically:
The combo of the decent writing but uneven pacing and storytelling, interesting characters besides the boring narrator, cool magic system and cool creepy nature but super weird out of place romance/intimate scenes, made me come out of this with severe whiplash. Overall enjoyable, just some...confusing choices.

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crwild's review against another edition

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adventurous 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? No

3.75

I read this book years ago and absolutely loved it. While this time it got me out of a beast of a reading slump, I didn’t like it as much this time around. The pacing was not great, especially in the middle, and I think there were narrative shortcuts taken. But I do still LOVE the antagonist of this book as well as the description of magic.

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hebifry's review against another edition

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This was atrocious. I read a review on here that said this book is like a warm sweater. If your sweater is filled with misogyny, SA, and tons and tons of grossly described stains then, yes it's a sweater. But not one I ever want to try wearing again. I actually felt ill reading this book. Loved the premise and the writing was good but the actual plot and characters made me sick. There is so much abuse in this book it's intolerable. The worst for me was the SA then the immediate victim blaming from our supposed love interest. No way. DNFed in the third chapter.

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ladyethyme's review against another edition

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Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

I would honestly give this a negative star if I could. The fact that this is catered toward YA readers for me is absolutely revolting.

Tedious and mediocre storytelling. The pacing was a complete slag. Some of the narrative itself was written relatively well, everything else in this book suffers.

Completely flat and one dimensional characters. Mary Sue main female character, a VERY special snowflake, with absolutely no explanation as to how her magic even works. She just speaks the words and somehow it happens. But she's so clumsy! And plain! And has super special magic powers! Where have we read this before…🙄

The entire magic system is honestly completely ridiculous.

Emotionally absent and abusive love interest, with literally zero chemistry between the protagonists. He's a completely arrogant, entitled, abusive, narcissistic asshole for no apparent reason, other than the fact that he wants to be one.

'The Dragon' continuously insults her, berates her, yet she she falls for him. Literally forces her to wear things she doesn't want to, she's sick and exhausted but he forces her to clean up her own vomit, and serve him without any instructions or help whatsoever. Se literally crawls on her hands and knees back up to her tower room. And he forced her to do this.

But she falls for him. Because "reasons".

He snarls and insult her, call her names, and then forces her to kiss him. The sex scene comes out of absolutely nowhere; it is so inappropriate and disturbing to the point I really wonder about this author's mental health.

Abuse is not romantic. I don't care how many authors try to make it sexy and romantic. It's not.

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wishbea's review against another edition

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Protagonist is boring, clumsy and a special snowflake. The man who is clearly going to be her romantic interest is verbally abusive, literally calling her "mentally deficient" and victim blames her. It's disgusting.

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