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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
I read this book almost a month ago and I still can’t get over how amazing it was. There’s a reason people talk this book up all over social media. It sticks with you long after you finish it.
Black Iris is about a girl named Laney who enlists the help of two friends to seek revenge on the bullies who tortured her in high school. Anyone who has ever been bullied dreams of finding a book like this. Laney’s not out for forgiveness and understanding. She wants blood and revenge. She’s a raw, unapologetic character who knows what she wants and how to get it. There are twists you never see coming. Blythe and Laney may go down as one of my favorite fictional couples. Their connection was fire.
This is the first book I’ve read by Leah Raeder and I was immediately blown away by every word on the page. Her prose is lyrical and poetic. The first sentence draws you in and holds you for the rest of the story. “April is the cruelest month, T.S. Elliot said, and that’s because it kills.” In every workshop or writing class out there, the instructor tells you that if your first sentence doesn’t immediately captivate the reader, you can’t expect them to hang on for two hundred pages. Leah Raeder’s first sentence is a hell of an example of that.
This is an amazing revenge story with captivating characters and a narrator who keeps you guessing with every page.
Black Iris is about a girl named Laney who enlists the help of two friends to seek revenge on the bullies who tortured her in high school. Anyone who has ever been bullied dreams of finding a book like this. Laney’s not out for forgiveness and understanding. She wants blood and revenge. She’s a raw, unapologetic character who knows what she wants and how to get it. There are twists you never see coming. Blythe and Laney may go down as one of my favorite fictional couples. Their connection was fire.
This is the first book I’ve read by Leah Raeder and I was immediately blown away by every word on the page. Her prose is lyrical and poetic. The first sentence draws you in and holds you for the rest of the story. “April is the cruelest month, T.S. Elliot said, and that’s because it kills.” In every workshop or writing class out there, the instructor tells you that if your first sentence doesn’t immediately captivate the reader, you can’t expect them to hang on for two hundred pages. Leah Raeder’s first sentence is a hell of an example of that.
This is an amazing revenge story with captivating characters and a narrator who keeps you guessing with every page.
woof! this book was intense. lyrical prose, obsessive, unlikable narrator, twists and turns that i truly didn’t see coming.
some of the quotes that destroyed me…
“Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it's total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral.
And it's relentless.”
and
“Let go of pain, not people.”
and
“A body has a way of wanting to be touched so badly that the touch itself will hurt, but so will remaining untouched. Nothing helps.”
like holy hell, elliot wake can write.
some of the quotes that destroyed me…
“Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it's total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral.
And it's relentless.”
and
“Let go of pain, not people.”
and
“A body has a way of wanting to be touched so badly that the touch itself will hurt, but so will remaining untouched. Nothing helps.”
like holy hell, elliot wake can write.
On paper this book looks exactly like my jam: dysfunctional, mentally ill, bisexual protagonist, fucked up relationships, a revenge plot. The trouble was that this book was painfully overwritten. The writer felt like she was trying too hard to be deep, and too often dropped quotes by T.S. Eliot or other "great" writers in - frequently with the main character doing the quoting, to demonstrate how intellectual she was. The metaphor of Laney as predator or wolf was overdone to the point of becoming trite, and it all felt like it was trying just a little too hard to be Dark and Real.
Not to mention the conclusion felt...weird. It was definitely trying for Edgy - "this isn't a story about redemption or forgiveness" type subversion - but it ended up just feeling unsatisfying, and like none of the characters had really grown or learned anything.
And then the twist at the end...also seemed to come out of left field and was just plain bizarre. What a bust of a recommendation.
The sex scenes were pretty hot, though.
Not to mention the conclusion felt...weird. It was definitely trying for Edgy - "this isn't a story about redemption or forgiveness" type subversion - but it ended up just feeling unsatisfying, and like none of the characters had really grown or learned anything.
And then the twist at the end...also seemed to come out of left field and was just plain bizarre. What a bust of a recommendation.
The sex scenes were pretty hot, though.
I have to think about the rating for a bit. There is much to like about this book. The writing is stunning and sophisticated and not just for an NA book. The characters are layered and alive. However, I'm not sure how to feel about the intersection of queerness, mental illness and violence.
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Sexual assault, Suicide
The only reason I haven't reviewed BLACK IRIS yet is because I'm still trying to find a more coherent way to describe the story than HOLY. SHIT.
I knew going in that this was going to be dark, and I knew going in that it was going to be hot, and I also knew that it would be ten or twenty different kinds of messed up. What I didn't expect at all was how well all of these pieces would fit together, or how extreme Laney's revenge spiral was actually going to be.
There are a lot of really horrible things described in detail in BLACK IRIS. There's quite a bit of violence. Large portions of the story read like a can't-look-away kind of train wreck, because you can't help wondering just how far Laney will go to get even, even after you suspect that she's already gone too far.
I was gleeful over some of the stunts she and her friends pulled, and disgusted by others. There were times when I was laughing maniacally right along with her, and other times where I had to close the book and walk away for a few hours, or a night, before I was able to go back and keep reading.
The whole story messes with your head in the same way that many of the other characters mess with Laney's, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It would be much harder to sympathize with a character who is so hell-bent on damage if you weren't getting a firsthand look at all the damage that has been done to her.
To me, the truly impressive thing about BLACK IRIS is that it doesn't promise redemption or a HEA to get you stick around for the ending. Instead, it takes a shunned, misunderstood outcast and provides you with an opportunity to understand her completely.
Which is so freaking perfect, I don't even know where to start.
I knew going in that this was going to be dark, and I knew going in that it was going to be hot, and I also knew that it would be ten or twenty different kinds of messed up. What I didn't expect at all was how well all of these pieces would fit together, or how extreme Laney's revenge spiral was actually going to be.
There are a lot of really horrible things described in detail in BLACK IRIS. There's quite a bit of violence. Large portions of the story read like a can't-look-away kind of train wreck, because you can't help wondering just how far Laney will go to get even, even after you suspect that she's already gone too far.
I was gleeful over some of the stunts she and her friends pulled, and disgusted by others. There were times when I was laughing maniacally right along with her, and other times where I had to close the book and walk away for a few hours, or a night, before I was able to go back and keep reading.
The whole story messes with your head in the same way that many of the other characters mess with Laney's, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It would be much harder to sympathize with a character who is so hell-bent on damage if you weren't getting a firsthand look at all the damage that has been done to her.
To me, the truly impressive thing about BLACK IRIS is that it doesn't promise redemption or a HEA to get you stick around for the ending. Instead, it takes a shunned, misunderstood outcast and provides you with an opportunity to understand her completely.
Which is so freaking perfect, I don't even know where to start.