Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - Under Locke

Reviews tagging 'Sexual harassment'

Under Locke by Mariana Zapata

6 reviews

marippe's review against another edition

slow-paced

2.25

Includes spoilers + talks of sexism

I feel very conflicted about this book. I enjoy Mariana's writing style a lot, it really lets me feel like we're entering into a real town, with all the local personalities. I feel like Iris' voice was very fleshed out.

Overall, I was finding myself extremely irritated. This book is extremely sexist, and I get that's the town it's set in, but our narrator and FMC Iris does little to counter this. She expresses when people are objectifying her and how she dislikes it but she does little about it in the narrative.
Rather, she expresses a misogynistic view of her own - slut shaming the many women around her. For example:

"A blonde woman in a very wrinkled dress that screamed she wasn’t opposed to public fondling."
"I felt like a drunken prostitute on the way through the hotel lobby and up the elevator with the two friends."
"Most girls my age were usually trying to take clothes off instead of putting more on. That seemed to be the story of my life. When some people my age were worrying about certain things, I’d be stuck tackling a whole different type of monster. Oh well."
"I bet no one else got to see his spare bedroom of comic stuff. Iris 1, Hookers Pre-Iris 0."

This "i'm not like other girls" slut-shamey bullshit was AWFUL. She feels as if she feels better than the other women just because she's a virgin and hasn't slept around. Her reaction to Luther's activities in the bar was odd to me, why is it not the predatory men going after women that are young enough to be their children? I get she doesn't agree with Luther wanting younger women, but it's not an equal blame scenario when the women in this town are basically second class citizens. I'm sad we didn't really get to know more about Blue, she could've helped counter this.

Dex was alright, his use of bitch to address women was a major ick and just personally turned me off. I know he's supposed to be a bad guy and sure he can be that bad guy, but that doesn't mean I gotta route for him. At least he's self aware, and he seemed to learn not to address women like that. His nicknames and dirty talk made me cringe tho.

Also??? why is it in books/media that people feel so entitled to know everything about each other? like being mad a friend held a personal secret. why is slim irritated that iris never mentioned that she had cancer? she didn't need to mention it.

Also also? The constant reference to refer to Sonny as her "half-brother" and how he's "not really her sibling" is very ??? That is your brother stop being so weird about it

This book had good potential because I did think it had interesting points, but it needed a lot more reworking and self awareness.

Content Warnings