So Very Done

So I should never read anything Karen Healey reccs me. The very fact that Karen Healey has recced me a book, means I should never read it and should avoid it like plague.

Karen Healey recced me (as did several others) Blood & Iron.

I am SO not naming this book.

I'm just ugh-ed at the black unreliable narrator who's revealed to be extremely sexual, while being content to be the other woman while a light skinned girl is the 'official' girlfriend. There's a phrasing I find to be extremely self hating, using the word Nappy (and no, it's not diapers). And then she's framed as being responsible for someone white losing control and committing murder. And said white person is not punished for this murder.

So oversexed black mistress, responsible for white person getting in touch with their inner animal, while her own family flounders about what to do / how to handle her own bestial moments/inner nature.

Her family, which consists of the seemingly sensitive white mother and the ok, but also unreliable black father. In the end they're both painted as total asses, but - unreliable narrator, remember.

Included in the book is a white character who's thought to have gone looking for an anonymous man to impregnate her -said man ending up being a black man. Whether he was a black buck to serve a purpose, or a naive young man in love who was used and discarded - readers will never know for sure.

And to top off things the readers will never know for sure, is if the unreliable narrator is someone who forged her own destiny and tried to find a way to live with who she is - or if she's a multiple murderer, deep in denial.

It's like Memento, but with race sprinkles: Wild black Jezebel stained with blood.

And oh yeah, there's also some iffy trans issues - I personally didn't like the seeming parallel of being trans equaling being a pathological liar, being mentally unstable or harbouring a beast inside that could harm other people. Cause really - isn't that the trans panic defense?

But hey, at least I read this one all the way through, even though it repeatedly hurt me. And boy am I never putting myself through that painful shite again, there are too many other books that exist which DON'T HURT ME.

PS: None of this by the way means the book wasn't skillfully written with good prose and with emotional points that would ring true if not for the unreliable narrator. On my own I might hunt down something else by the author that doesn't involve on going deceit or people of color. In fact it'd probably be less painful to me to only read books involving white people by said author. Then I have one less sore point.

Of course I'm unlikely to read anything by this author any time soon.