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meemawreads's review
dark
mysterious
slow-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? Yes
1.0
I took this book with all the grains of salt you approach a 41 year old book with. I wanted something mysterious on a chilly, rainy day and this book’s font and the old pocket inside from the bygone manual library system made me nostalgic. I let it slide that this male narrator was a neglectful father and terrible husband, a misogynist, ceaselessly complaining about everything around him and taking no responsibility for his circumstances, and conceived his unloved daughter by assault because I assumed through a few context clues that he was the villain of this story. A little girl goes missing and he can’t remember where he was that night. Seems pretty clear. Nope! Turns out he was innocent, we never find out who the killer was, it ends on an unsatisfying cliffhanger where we assume that because he failed in “rescuing“ his daughter from her “crazy“ mother that he will be “framed“ for the murder and Mary Rose will be raised by a “hysterical loon”. I gave this book more than a fair shot and I am truly humbled by the depths of this author’s internalized misogyny. I really thought she wrote this narrator as such a horrible guy so that we would be satisfied seeing him get his in the end. But all his unfair observations and assumptions about the women around him end up being true, I guess? What an absolute pile of garbage. I got the privilege of being raised and now living in a world that does not think this way so this book gets one star for making me grateful that my world is so different from the self-loathing, woman-bashing hellscape this author’s inner world is. Tragic.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Child abuse, and Murder
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