Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - The Last Housewife

I have so many feelings about this book. The beginning of the book was strong because it had a lot of tension. There was a build-up to learning about what happened to Shay, and then I felt like after she gets involved with the Paters, (which sounded kind of mispronounced from a Latin standpoint in the first part of the audiobook) the tension is just lost. The meetings can't be portrayed as super terrifying

if really nothing bad happens to Shay and she can escape all the time. Also what the hell was up with her getting the brand?

I feel like the violence got normalized to the reader because it was just more and more meetings. I did want to stop reading it a few times because the misogynistic language from The Bad Guys was too much. I also thought, and this felt confirmed by the author being an academic, that there were some Big Ideas about Feminism that were tried to be explored, but it felt heavy-handed and not concrete. Also, I really wanted to like Jamie, but I felt

not great about him from a reporter-is-exploiting-trauma standpoint and also that Shay seemed in no healthy mental state to be having a sexual relationship.

I feel like the reflections on the past had a lot of promise as a plot, but I started feeling lost as current events happened.

Content Warnings

hjb_128's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-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

2.5

Content Warnings

saralatable's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

vaguely_pink's review against another edition

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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? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

daria_morgendorffer's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
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

3.5

I am still processing my feelings about this book and I’m sure I’ll continue thinking about it in the days to come. A few of the twists were entirely predictable. And the frequent verbal unburdening didn’t feel natural to human interactions, and instead felt like a ploy to move the plot forward without actually writing the plot. The vignettes were written in a very confusing way, and by the time you know their significance, they don’t seem to matter anymore.

Over all, it was engaging and hard to put down. I’m not mad I read it, but I don’t know if I would recommend it. If you do, definitely review the content warnings first.

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