Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Betty

Jesus Crimson. That's really all I can say about this book.

Y'all, I love tragedy and dark stories and trauma porn, or whatever you want to call it. I like stories that dwell on the shitty part of life on this planet. A Little Life is my favorite novel, so that's my point of reference when I tell you that this book was almost too much for me. I barely finished.

I can tolerate a lot of human abuse and horror but on top of that, this book has outrageous scenes of animal abuse that permanently scarred my soul. And the worst part about it, is that this is an actual recounting of the life of the author's mother. BLESS IT. To the actual Betty this book is based on, I'm so so so sorry that you had to live through that hellacious childhood and I hope your adulthood was exponentially better. Thank the stars for your father, the only bright light in this whole story.

At times the writing was melodic and Landon's stories were surreal, but I can't even give this book a start rating because I don't know how.

Content Warnings

pomoevareads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

I am broken. This book tore me apart and took me 9 days to read as I could only manage small amounts at a time. With that said Betty is also written with such beauty.

Betty is born to a Cherokee father and a white mother and has many siblings. After the death of two of her siblings the family moves to Breathed, Ohio where they move into a house where bullet holes have penetrated many walls and the previous family disappeared without a trace. Her father Landon makes special teas and medicine for the community and they live a life just getting by. Landon shares Cherokee stories and culture with his family. Each of the children are washed in the river when they are born and given a special skill or interest. Nature forms a great part of family life and the daughters even make a stage of sorts where one of them acts, one of them sings and Betty is a writer who writes her stories there and puts them in jars and buries them.

Each chapter begins with a verse from the bible which I found rather interesting given the family is not religious. It is clear that Christianity has informed them in their upbringing in ways but Landon also tells his children about how indigenous people were removed from their land by colonizers and how religion was forced upon them.

This book is not for the faint of heart. Pretty much every trigger warning that exists happens in this book. I will try and capture them all on StoryGraph but know this going in. I was prepared for the human ones but not the animal ones.

Having recently lost my father, the notes on grief, particularly at the end of the book left me bawling. “No water is ever at rest” speaks to the grief of losing someone special to you. “The waters will never be still.”

Having previously loved On the Savage Side and now with this experience, I hope to pick up McDaniel’s earlier novel The Summer that Melted Everything.

Content Warnings