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foreverinastory's review
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
0.25
This was very not good....
January pick for the #WickAndJaneBookClub on Instagram
I don't know if this book was read by any indigenous people before it's publication, but I really wish it had been. Or if it had, that publishing and/or the author had taken these claims to heart and edited a lot of this book. There were so many problems with this book and most of them are because of the massive amounts of anti-indigenous rhetoric that this book is full of.
Mavi is on the run from the Argentinian government because her mother is a leftist. Angel is an other haunting the De Vaccaro finishing school. Between these two POVs we are to unravel the mystery of the De Vaccaro school. Angel is never gendered by themselves in this book so I won't refer to them with any male or female pronouns.
So the premise is that the De Vaccaro family are colonizers from Italy that came to Argentina and decided to take land from an indigenous group, the Zapuche. (Pause: The Zapuche are fictional, but in real life there is a native group of Argentina-Chile called the Mapuche. I don't really know what to do with this info but it was weird that these fictional native people are so closely based to real life native people.) The De Vaccaro family steals the land and makes their gigantic school to help young rich girls finish their education. But after this happens, the native people retaliate. A sickness of some sort descends on the house. In order for the colonizers to be saved though, a Zapuche daughter must be sacrificed.
Using the misaligned trope that indigenous people sacrifice their own daughters is wrong. There was some other stuff about the whole ritual and what happened between the De Vaccaro's and the Zapuche, but basically it was all bad and used many stereotypes of indigenous people to make them purposefully look bad. All these people wanted was for the people who LITERALLY STOLE their land to leave. Also there were several instances of the word "savage" being used in reference to the Zapuche people, and that's also just a no. If you don't understand someone's culture, that's not an excuse to label them as lesser or primitive or savage.
On top of all the anti-indigenous rhetoric this book is FULL of, there was also a very lovely anti-Semitic remark thrown in, because apparently we need all the discrimination.
"...in case you are thinking that we were Nazis. But we aren't Jews, either, God forbid."
Yay for casual anti-Semitic remarks. This was made by one of the young girls at the school.
Besides this the whole plot was just boring?? And the twist at the end was weird as fuck and made the whole indigenous storyline unnecessary. Like it could've been replaced with anything else and the plot would've been the same. In other words, there was no reason for how anti-indigenous this book was.
I cannot wait to unhaul this book.
January pick for the #WickAndJaneBookClub on Instagram
I don't know if this book was read by any indigenous people before it's publication, but I really wish it had been. Or if it had, that publishing and/or the author had taken these claims to heart and edited a lot of this book. There were so many problems with this book and most of them are because of the massive amounts of anti-indigenous rhetoric that this book is full of.
Mavi is on the run from the Argentinian government because her mother is a leftist. Angel is an other haunting the De Vaccaro finishing school. Between these two POVs we are to unravel the mystery of the De Vaccaro school. Angel is never gendered by themselves in this book so I won't refer to them with any male or female pronouns.
So the premise is that the De Vaccaro family are colonizers from Italy that came to Argentina and decided to take land from an indigenous group, the Zapuche. (Pause: The Zapuche are fictional, but in real life there is a native group of Argentina-Chile called the Mapuche. I don't really know what to do with this info but it was weird that these fictional native people are so closely based to real life native people.) The De Vaccaro family steals the land and makes their gigantic school to help young rich girls finish their education. But after this happens, the native people retaliate. A sickness of some sort descends on the house. In order for the colonizers to be saved though, a Zapuche daughter must be sacrificed.
Using the misaligned trope that indigenous people sacrifice their own daughters is wrong. There was some other stuff about the whole ritual and what happened between the De Vaccaro's and the Zapuche, but basically it was all bad and used many stereotypes of indigenous people to make them purposefully look bad. All these people wanted was for the people who LITERALLY STOLE their land to leave. Also there were several instances of the word "savage" being used in reference to the Zapuche people, and that's also just a no. If you don't understand someone's culture, that's not an excuse to label them as lesser or primitive or savage.
On top of all the anti-indigenous rhetoric this book is FULL of, there was also a very lovely anti-Semitic remark thrown in, because apparently we need all the discrimination.
"...in case you are thinking that we were Nazis. But we aren't Jews, either, God forbid."
Yay for casual anti-Semitic remarks. This was made by one of the young girls at the school.
Besides this the whole plot was just boring?? And the twist at the end was weird as fuck and made the whole indigenous storyline unnecessary. Like it could've been replaced with anything else and the plot would've been the same. In other words, there was no reason for how anti-indigenous this book was.
I cannot wait to unhaul this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Racial slurs, Racism, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Blood, Drug use, and Emotional abuse
Minor: Antisemitism
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