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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
not really my place to Review it but i really liked how this was written, and appreciate the dedication to representing characters that felt so real rather than trying to be perfect.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
this book is simultaneously too long and too short. the prose can be lovely but there are also entire chunks proselytising about transness and womanhood, which makes this feel more like an essay than a novel at points. also, i couldn’t quite shake the misogyny that seems to be threaded into the text, both in reece’s dismissal of cisgender womanhood and also in the notion that femininity and womanhood is tied to an acceptance and enjoyment of masculine violence. this is an interesting premise that i don’t think fulfils its execution, and would have either been served by becoming a short story or by extending beyond the final scene, or at least doing better to assess the impact of this on the main trio’s dynamic
plot:
reece and amy used to date, but now reece self sabotages by hooking up with a married man she calls her cowboy, who refuses to be seen in public with her. all she wants is to be a mother, but is aware that time is running out for her. ames detransitioned and has been stealth about that at work, hooking up with his boss, katrina. he thinks the oestrogen he took made him infertile, until she tells him that she’s pregnant. ames isn’t sure that he wants to be a father, but thinks that adding reece and parenting as a trio might be the way to go. this is also when he tells katrina that he’s a detransitioner, which she doesn’t take well, outing him at a client meeting. the book is told in a nonlinear manner, flashing back to reece and amy’s relationship. before amy, reece dated stanley in a sort of hate-courtship, where he essentially treats her as property and she equates his violence and ownership as validation for her femininity. she’s also sworn off dating trans people, until she meets amy, who reminds her of sebastian, her ex. amy gets her out of stanley’s apartment and they move in together, pursuing a romantic relationship as reece helps amy gets comfortable in her transition. amy reminisces on her move into girlhood, thinking that she was fetishising it rather than actually wanting to be trans, having dissociative sex where he enacts violence on women to pretend that he’s on the receiving end. in the present katrina and reece meet and things are tense, but eventually they go baby shopping and seem to settle into the idea of co-mothering. back in the past we find out that reece cheated on amy with stanley and amy confronted stanley, leading to him attacking her and exposing her in public. amy’s response to this is to see her performance of femininity as futile, which led to her detransitioning. present, katrina and reece go to hang out with katrina’s friends, where katrina finds out that reece’s cowboy is one of her friend’s husbands, leading to them falling out. reece indicates that the cowboy doesn’t want to see her again, ames says that he’ll be a parent if that’s what katrina wants but can’t promise he’ll always be a man and katrina doesn’t want that, so schedules an abortion. the book ends with the trio preparing for katrina to get the abortion
plot:
emotional
informative
sad
funny
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was hoping and expecting for some education and enlightenment on the trans community, but this book left me more frustrated than anything. I hated all three main characters. None of them knew what they wanted or how to talk about their feelings in a meaningful, productive way. And none of them had any real redeeming qualities in my opinion. The plot sounded really interesting, but I hated the way the author developed it. I should have DNF'd, but I was so hopeful that it would get better. Also, I found the writing to be unnecessarily pretentious.
Spoiler
It just didn't make any sense why they would try to make this triad of parenthood work with the histories of these three people. And don't even get me started on the abortion plot and the end.
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked the challenge of examining the different ideas posed by this book regarding family and motherhood. The portrayal of detransition, exploring why a trans woman would decide on that process, was fascinating too. I would have enjoyed this more without the intense misogyny though. It appears so early on, it left a lasting impression on me.
While this book does focus on the flaws and motivations of its three main characters, I had a hard time trying to separate their views from the author's messages. This was mainly down to the writing style - it devolves into lectures delivered by the character's inner voice too often. They were very indulgent rants that didn't read as organic.
It's a character-driven book, but they aren't portrayed realistically. I found this quite overwritten with lots of information dumps and explanations with too much detail. I would have preferred to see the characters working through their relationships with each other more naturally, rather than having the narrator just tell me how they're feeling.
From a personal point of view, the misogyny just really threw me for a loop. I also felt the author's handling of Katrina's race was clumsy - this seemed shoehorned in and wasn't explored in the same way gender was. Why bother then?
While this book does focus on the flaws and motivations of its three main characters, I had a hard time trying to separate their views from the author's messages. This was mainly down to the writing style - it devolves into lectures delivered by the character's inner voice too often. They were very indulgent rants that didn't read as organic.
It's a character-driven book, but they aren't portrayed realistically. I found this quite overwritten with lots of information dumps and explanations with too much detail. I would have preferred to see the characters working through their relationships with each other more naturally, rather than having the narrator just tell me how they're feeling.
From a personal point of view, the misogyny just really threw me for a loop. I also felt the author's handling of Katrina's race was clumsy - this seemed shoehorned in and wasn't explored in the same way gender was. Why bother then?