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1.91 AVERAGE
1.91 AVERAGE
The only word that comes to mind is... awful.
I wanted to like this book, I am a history major with a preference for fiction, so this should have been right up my alley, but oh wow was this bad!
Set in the 60's and 70's southern America, we are thrust into the racism and action within the first few pages. An attack from the KKK almost kills one of our main characters. She is rushed to a colored only hospital, she is seen despite the fact she is white. So we immediately see the racist nature of America on full display. The overt racism lessens as the book goes on, but in a way that is realistic to the changing ideals of the time. This is about all that I will give the book, praise wise.
Our leading lady is Vanessa. She is a light skinned African American, that everyone mistakes for being white, which is a pivotal plot point. Vanessa is also drop dead gorgeous, the prettiest girl in the whole wide world. What does she look like? I know her hair is dark and straight, and that is literally all the descriptors we get! I understand wanting to leave things up to the imagination, but give me literally anything to work off of, especially when everyone and their mother can't stop saying how stunning she is. Her being attractive and light skinned is like most of the plot points too by the way. She doesn't really have a character other than hot orphan, who is incredibly naïve, and so pale she is considered white.
Her initial love interest is a guy named Barry, and oh boy does he suck! He is in love with Vanessa because she is hot, and he is a horn dog. He then moves away to college, and has a whole a** girlfriend but still is all on Vanessa. He sucks!
Then you have the nun, sister Rosalie. Not a bad character, she has some funny moments, but she is insufferable, and makes the characters around her insufferable as well. She is a history whiz, with a seemingly photographic memory. She will randomly go on historical lectures that no one wants to hear, and at times that are wholly inappropriate. This then rubs off on the main characters. She is actively teaching them history lessons which is fantastic! But this manifests into the characters remembering the lessons, and being able to quote the facts word for word, for the rest of their lives! I am a history major with a deep love of history and can give you fact after fact, but even I can't give you 40 dates in a row off the top of my head about a specific topic, including numerous direct quotes from historical figures. I am sure there are people out there that can, but it just reads as incredibly fake when 2 main characters remember the exact date, time, location, and people of interest on the drop of a dime. One of them even does this while drunk!
Then you have the assault scenes, and that is the only way I can describe it. Barry coerces Vanessa into giving him a hand job. Okay they are young, and neither really knows how to ask for what they want, it is the 60's/70's after all, they don't have sex ed. However, Vanesa is SOBBING during this, and Barry is just making her continue. It was vile, but this was not an isolated incident in Vanessa's life. Later on Barry fingers her TO ORGASM on his first ever try (he learned it from play boy supposedly), but he is stripping this poor girl in the back garden while his parents are mere feet away. Then there is the post funeral scene. Barry's mom dies, and Vanessa goes to the funeral to be there for Barry. Afterwards they are at his parents house and he starts having sex with her, which she is not really on board for because they don't have a condom. It also just straight up does not fit the mood. Who can have sex while actively crying about their dead mom?? She obviously get's pregnant after this, and has an abortion, which is also not handled with the most decorum, and honestly is not an important part of the story so personally I see no point to it being added in. After Barry, she doesn't date until Ted won't leave her the hell alone. He eventually gets her to date him and later marry him. He is very rough in bed- at one point punishing her using sex- and in public (yes they have sex in public, and no she does not want it.) These scenes are also blatant assault, and I don't understand why she can't just have normal sex once in her life!
She says that both times she has had unprotected sex, she gets pregnant, which is a thing that happens. However, my issues is with the part where she says BOTH times. She has had unprotected sex at least 3 times, yes mildly nitpicky, but if I noticed it, why couldn't the author or an editor. Anyways she has the baby, who also ends up very pale, pretty much white. The baby gets sick, and it is determined that he has sickle cell anemia. Now this illness is most prevalent in the black community, however there are white people with the illness as well. This plot point is AWFUL in its execution. Vanessa's FIL is told about the child's illness first, not her, already bothersome. Anyways, the doctor tells the FIL that Vanessa and the baby are black, there is no question about it. Yet, the conversation that follows made me want to tear my hair out! This is a tldr replica of the conversation that was had.
FIL: "how do you know that they aren't white??"
Doctor: "well the baby has sickle cell, and to have the illness, both parents have to be carriers of the gene."
FIL: "so she is black!"
Doctor: "yes, that is correct. there is no other explanation, I would bet my medical license on it." Like ???? If BOTH parents have to be carriers, and both the doc and FIL are certain that Ted is 100% white, then how is it a slam dunk that Vanessa isn't white????? It made literally no sense, and still doesn't.
After this revelation, Ted and his dad plot to kill Vanessa. They cut the breaks in the car that Vanessa, the baby, and Trish (girl who almost died in the beginning) are in. They fly off a cliff and land in the ocean. They all survive, but Trish has to go get help. She scales up a cliff, and tries to go to a nearby house. When she gets there she overhears Ted and his dad talking about how their evil plan worked, and in detail how they paid someone to cut the breaks, and now they don't have to worry about her. I HATE this trope! Have them startled when they end up alive, or have Trish put the pieces together, but to stumble upon them during their evil monologue, detailing a plan that they would have already gone over, is just mind numbingly bad story telling.
In the end, Vanessa ends up with Barry, the worst ending in my opinion. Ted and his dad go to jail for attempted murder. The end.
This book is one of the worst books I have ever read. I am usually in the minority when it comes to my opinions on books (my go to rating is 3 stars, as so many books these days are just unremarkable), but I am glad to be in the majority this go around. If you are thinking about reading this book, DON'T. It is not worth your time, go pick literally any other book. You're welcome.
I wanted to like this book, I am a history major with a preference for fiction, so this should have been right up my alley, but oh wow was this bad!
Set in the 60's and 70's southern America, we are thrust into the racism and action within the first few pages. An attack from the KKK almost kills one of our main characters. She is rushed to a colored only hospital, she is seen despite the fact she is white. So we immediately see the racist nature of America on full display. The overt racism lessens as the book goes on, but in a way that is realistic to the changing ideals of the time. This is about all that I will give the book, praise wise.
Our leading lady is Vanessa. She is a light skinned African American, that everyone mistakes for being white, which is a pivotal plot point. Vanessa is also drop dead gorgeous, the prettiest girl in the whole wide world. What does she look like? I know her hair is dark and straight, and that is literally all the descriptors we get! I understand wanting to leave things up to the imagination, but give me literally anything to work off of, especially when everyone and their mother can't stop saying how stunning she is. Her being attractive and light skinned is like most of the plot points too by the way. She doesn't really have a character other than hot orphan, who is incredibly naïve, and so pale she is considered white.
Her initial love interest is a guy named Barry, and oh boy does he suck! He is in love with Vanessa because she is hot, and he is a horn dog. He then moves away to college, and has a whole a** girlfriend but still is all on Vanessa. He sucks!
Then you have the nun, sister Rosalie. Not a bad character, she has some funny moments, but she is insufferable, and makes the characters around her insufferable as well. She is a history whiz, with a seemingly photographic memory. She will randomly go on historical lectures that no one wants to hear, and at times that are wholly inappropriate. This then rubs off on the main characters. She is actively teaching them history lessons which is fantastic! But this manifests into the characters remembering the lessons, and being able to quote the facts word for word, for the rest of their lives! I am a history major with a deep love of history and can give you fact after fact, but even I can't give you 40 dates in a row off the top of my head about a specific topic, including numerous direct quotes from historical figures. I am sure there are people out there that can, but it just reads as incredibly fake when 2 main characters remember the exact date, time, location, and people of interest on the drop of a dime. One of them even does this while drunk!
Then you have the assault scenes, and that is the only way I can describe it. Barry coerces Vanessa into giving him a hand job. Okay they are young, and neither really knows how to ask for what they want, it is the 60's/70's after all, they don't have sex ed. However, Vanesa is SOBBING during this, and Barry is just making her continue. It was vile, but this was not an isolated incident in Vanessa's life. Later on Barry fingers her TO ORGASM on his first ever try (he learned it from play boy supposedly), but he is stripping this poor girl in the back garden while his parents are mere feet away. Then there is the post funeral scene. Barry's mom dies, and Vanessa goes to the funeral to be there for Barry. Afterwards they are at his parents house and he starts having sex with her, which she is not really on board for because they don't have a condom. It also just straight up does not fit the mood. Who can have sex while actively crying about their dead mom?? She obviously get's pregnant after this, and has an abortion, which is also not handled with the most decorum, and honestly is not an important part of the story so personally I see no point to it being added in. After Barry, she doesn't date until Ted won't leave her the hell alone. He eventually gets her to date him and later marry him. He is very rough in bed- at one point punishing her using sex- and in public (yes they have sex in public, and no she does not want it.) These scenes are also blatant assault, and I don't understand why she can't just have normal sex once in her life!
She says that both times she has had unprotected sex, she gets pregnant, which is a thing that happens. However, my issues is with the part where she says BOTH times. She has had unprotected sex at least 3 times, yes mildly nitpicky, but if I noticed it, why couldn't the author or an editor. Anyways she has the baby, who also ends up very pale, pretty much white. The baby gets sick, and it is determined that he has sickle cell anemia. Now this illness is most prevalent in the black community, however there are white people with the illness as well. This plot point is AWFUL in its execution. Vanessa's FIL is told about the child's illness first, not her, already bothersome. Anyways, the doctor tells the FIL that Vanessa and the baby are black, there is no question about it. Yet, the conversation that follows made me want to tear my hair out! This is a tldr replica of the conversation that was had.
FIL: "how do you know that they aren't white??"
Doctor: "well the baby has sickle cell, and to have the illness, both parents have to be carriers of the gene."
FIL: "so she is black!"
Doctor: "yes, that is correct. there is no other explanation, I would bet my medical license on it." Like ???? If BOTH parents have to be carriers, and both the doc and FIL are certain that Ted is 100% white, then how is it a slam dunk that Vanessa isn't white????? It made literally no sense, and still doesn't.
After this revelation, Ted and his dad plot to kill Vanessa. They cut the breaks in the car that Vanessa, the baby, and Trish (girl who almost died in the beginning) are in. They fly off a cliff and land in the ocean. They all survive, but Trish has to go get help. She scales up a cliff, and tries to go to a nearby house. When she gets there she overhears Ted and his dad talking about how their evil plan worked, and in detail how they paid someone to cut the breaks, and now they don't have to worry about her. I HATE this trope! Have them startled when they end up alive, or have Trish put the pieces together, but to stumble upon them during their evil monologue, detailing a plan that they would have already gone over, is just mind numbingly bad story telling.
In the end, Vanessa ends up with Barry, the worst ending in my opinion. Ted and his dad go to jail for attempted murder. The end.
This book is one of the worst books I have ever read. I am usually in the minority when it comes to my opinions on books (my go to rating is 3 stars, as so many books these days are just unremarkable), but I am glad to be in the majority this go around. If you are thinking about reading this book, DON'T. It is not worth your time, go pick literally any other book. You're welcome.
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
*I was commissioned by Online Book Club
If I could give this book a 0, I would. I would not have picked this book up, let alone finish it if I weren’t commissioned to read it.
From the get-go I was worried about a white woman writing a book with a Black lead based in the Jim Crow South. Boy, was I right to worry. The pages were seeped in racism and stereotypes when it came to any non-white character. One of the opening scenes involves a hate crime by the Ku Klux Klan then continues to nose dive.
We didn’t even get a real description of Vanessa, our main character, until she got married. The sex and sexual assault scenes have more descriptions than Vanessa does! The landscapes also get more of a description than Vanessa.
The sex and sexual assault scenes. I have to talk about them despite the fact they might qualify as spoilers. It’s more important for me to warn someone who might read the book than to care about spoilers. There are several and they are brutal. Why? What purpose did explicit sexual assault have here? There are plenty of ways to show the abuse Vanessa receives from her husband that aren’t multiple, explicit assaults. These scenes are more examples of the author’s racism making it into the pages of this book.
Much of the writing is clunky with bad transitions and dialogue. There are also no warnings that the point of view has changed between some chapters so you have to reread a few paragraphs to ground yourself in the story.
I do not want to be mean but this is one of the worst books I have ever read. Skip reading this for the racism, the poor story structure, or the jagged writing but just skip the book altogether.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Chronic illness, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, Car accident, Abortion
Moderate: Pregnancy
Awful
Deceptive Calm by Patricia Skipper is about Vanessa, a beautiful black orphan girl with light skin, often mistaken for a white person. This book follows her life story from her time in high school in Charleston, South Carolina to her move to San Francisco, California.
Right off the bat, the first chapter of this book caught my attention. Vanessa and her schoolmates were attacked by a hate group, I shall say, and it quickly set the scene on what to expect from this book.
However, as the story goes on, inherent writing flaws become quite distracting. The dialogue was very stilted and robotic, everything emotion, every movement, was being spoon-fed by the author straight to the reader’s mouth. I would’ve DNF’ed this halfway through but I persevered.
Unfortunately, things get worse. The author knows so much about history that she wants her characters to spew them at the reader even when it doesn’t really make any sense to the narrative.
The writing style reads like a screenplay and the storyline is like something from a soap opera, There are a lot of scenes that could’ve been taken out of the book and no it wouldn’t make a pinch of difference.
The worst part for me is the awful surgical-like descriptions of the sex scenes. It’s quite torturous to read. I hate that the author seems adamant about describing every little detail when Vanessa is having awful experiences with her partner. But the writing is so underdeveloped that you don’t really know what Vanessa is feeling unless she tells you exactly what.
The characters are one-dimensional and caricatures of the worst sort. However, some of them show promise like Sister Roe. Trisha was the most developed. Their relationship with Vanessa was the best part of this story.
Some little positives this book has is the author’s ability to immerse the readers in the setting. She has knowledge of the place where the characters call home, at least. Is it the strongest descriptive writing? No, but it’s there.
All in all, I’m giving this book a 1 out of 5 stars. It reads like a rough first draft and needs a very skilled editor to make it worth a reader’s while. The history lessons and descriptions of Charleston and California were quite interesting, though.
Deceptive Calm by Patricia Skipper is about Vanessa, a beautiful black orphan girl with light skin, often mistaken for a white person. This book follows her life story from her time in high school in Charleston, South Carolina to her move to San Francisco, California.
Right off the bat, the first chapter of this book caught my attention. Vanessa and her schoolmates were attacked by a hate group, I shall say, and it quickly set the scene on what to expect from this book.
However, as the story goes on, inherent writing flaws become quite distracting. The dialogue was very stilted and robotic, everything emotion, every movement, was being spoon-fed by the author straight to the reader’s mouth. I would’ve DNF’ed this halfway through but I persevered.
Unfortunately, things get worse. The author knows so much about history that she wants her characters to spew them at the reader even when it doesn’t really make any sense to the narrative.
The writing style reads like a screenplay and the storyline is like something from a soap opera, There are a lot of scenes that could’ve been taken out of the book and no it wouldn’t make a pinch of difference.
The worst part for me is the awful surgical-like descriptions of the sex scenes. It’s quite torturous to read. I hate that the author seems adamant about describing every little detail when Vanessa is having awful experiences with her partner. But the writing is so underdeveloped that you don’t really know what Vanessa is feeling unless she tells you exactly what.
The characters are one-dimensional and caricatures of the worst sort. However, some of them show promise like Sister Roe. Trisha was the most developed. Their relationship with Vanessa was the best part of this story.
Some little positives this book has is the author’s ability to immerse the readers in the setting. She has knowledge of the place where the characters call home, at least. Is it the strongest descriptive writing? No, but it’s there.
All in all, I’m giving this book a 1 out of 5 stars. It reads like a rough first draft and needs a very skilled editor to make it worth a reader’s while. The history lessons and descriptions of Charleston and California were quite interesting, though.
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Abortion
This book has a lot of issues with it. And it was taking a lot for me to even attempt to finish reading it. The plot is hard to follow at some points, sometimes I wondered who the story was actually about.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Medical trauma, Abortion, Pregnancy
Moderate: Car accident
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Starts slow but really picks up after the first few chapters!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Blood, Abortion
challenging
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism
Moderate: Rape, Violence
Was commissioned to read this by the OnlineBookClub and had to DNF.
I find it absolutely abhorrent that in the year 2022 of our Lord a white author was given any sort of platform to condone their use of the N-word at all, but especially so liberally. This was enough for me to put the book down and does not include all the other things other reviewers mentioned. There's absolutely no excuse for this and just reading the first few pages was absolutely unbearable. A white woman, no matter how much she's witnessed first-hand the effects of a segregated Jim Crow South, shouldn't be the authoring these stories in this way and it feels completely out of touch for one to romanticize even a fictional story of abuse and misogynoir towards a Black woman. I'm still beyond shocked at the blatant racism and audacity of it all. Two thousand and twenty-two. I'm so angry she has received any money at all from me for this.
For the record, white isn't supposed to be capitalized; Black is.
I find it absolutely abhorrent that in the year 2022 of our Lord a white author was given any sort of platform to condone their use of the N-word at all, but especially so liberally. This was enough for me to put the book down and does not include all the other things other reviewers mentioned. There's absolutely no excuse for this and just reading the first few pages was absolutely unbearable. A white woman, no matter how much she's witnessed first-hand the effects of a segregated Jim Crow South, shouldn't be the authoring these stories in this way and it feels completely out of touch for one to romanticize even a fictional story of abuse and misogynoir towards a Black woman. I'm still beyond shocked at the blatant racism and audacity of it all. Two thousand and twenty-two. I'm so angry she has received any money at all from me for this.
For the record, white isn't supposed to be capitalized; Black is.