Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - Firekeeper's Daughter

I couldn't put this book, it definitely threw off my sleep schedule. I found myself really immersing in the story, the characters, and Daunis' journey. I have also been looking for more stories with diverse perspectives and this is the first book I've read with a native main character. I'm thankful the author shared some of her culture through this book. Everything from the characters, place and stakes feel real, from the joy and connection of community to the harsh reality of the injustice that native women face.

Even though I am giving this book such a high rating, it has a lot of problems and loose ends. I did feel like the beginning was slow on the mystery/investigation side. It took a while for Daunis to move the discovery and sleuthing along, but it does pick up and keep you guessing. The twists are not so surprising because they are hinted at many times. It may be worth pushing through if you feel like it's not picking up at first, but I think it can come off mishandling serious topics and juggling too many plotlines, characters and information. It is quite long and some of it could have been cut down. There are a couple of things that gnawed at me and you can see the short, vague spoiler or the longer spoilers to see if this will be a hit or miss for you.

Short:

The romance between Daunis and Jamie is weird. Not only is he a 22 year old with a secretive career while Daunis is an 18 year old that just started college, but there is an unhealthy power dynamic between them. It's also instalove.

There is a rape scene that receives no justice and feels unnecessary to add, especially since more could have done in handling in the aftermath of it better.

Daunis' development is sprinkled in along with the billion other plotlines and ideas that get mentioned almost every page. She is very judgmental toward women her age as a nonfeminine, sporty woman in STEM who thinks she's so different than other girls. They are times where she realizes she has been unfairly judging others, but there was too much going in the plot.

There is just a lot going on in general.

Long:

I wasn't a fan of Daunis and "Jamie." First, this is a man with a whole agent career interested in a girl who hasn't started college yet, barely 18 while he's 22. Plus it was his idea to make her a CI and to fake date her all while she's grieving her best friend, her uncle and thinks her grandma's dying. He took advantage and I couldn't get over how icky their relationship felt so I never rooted for them. I was glad they didn't officially end up together and she chose herself and told him to choose himself. They didn't love each other, in my opinion.

Also there is a point where Daunis is sexually assaulted and I couldn't understand why that was included. I believe the intention was to bring attention to how native women are assaulted, killed, and kidnapped at alarming rates and there often isn't justice. I don't think it would make sense for Daunis to be truly healed from this and it is acknowledged at the end with the yellow pansies. Though there is a lot going in the story and I think that there was probably too much going on to give this plotline and other certain aspects more time in the narrative to do it justice. As I mentioned, there are a lot of areas that have no resolution. I decided that was intentional to show that realistically justice does not happen as we'd want it to. However, the mention of rape and the rape scene needed more time dedicated to acknowledgment and careful handing of it. It is also heavily implied that Dana raped Levi Sr. and it's just brushed past. I did side-eye how this was handled during Daunis and Levi Jr.'s conversation toward the end.

I saw Daunis' judgmental attitude toward other young women as a flaw and I wish it was more obvious that she was growing and realizing that she was being terrible to those girls just like the guys she criticizes. She always calls out Levi for not treating women with respect, but she doesn't either even if she's not sleeping with those girls like Levi or the boys on the hockey team. At first, she criticizes the girlfriends of the hockey players as "anglerfish girlfriends" (bottom feeder fish that latch onto their partner like a parasite - a paraphrase of her words). But when she "becomes" one herself, she realizes by spending time with the girls that she was wrong about them and they are very nice, despite how mean and distant she has been to them.

Admittedly, you have to suspend a lot of belief to think that this 18 year old could do all this, but hey, that's for you to decide if you want to turn a blind eye. For me, there were flaws, but I think me connecting with Daunis, her feeling like a real person, relatable and flawed, is what made me intuitively think this was 5 stars instead of somewhere between 4 and 5 stars...

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himpersonal's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful informative sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This was a powerful story. From all I’ve read, learned, and heard between books and my Indigenous friends, the themes in the story ring true, sadly and tragically, especially those of addiction and missing and murdered Indigenous women. Not sure how much FBI actually care, but I would like to think that regardless of if they do, there are people like Daunis whose courage is enough to bring healing to these tribes, which are and will continue to suffer from the generational trauma of forced colonization. My heart is heavy for every single one who has died as a result and live in destitution and despair today due to the generations of pain that cause people to turn to drugs and alcohol.

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shydragon's review

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I was not expecting to have

rape

come up in this book. I knew what the premise of the book was and that there was drug use and murder but that was just too much for me, especially because it was so obvious I got pissed off at Daunis for walking right into it. After that I was pretty disengaged and it just got worse from there. I was not prepared for any of this in a YA book and I think there needed to be some trigger warnings at the beginning.

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julzella's review against another edition

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2.5

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talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

Sometimes when I read a book I have a super unpopular opinion on, I have to wonder if either I or everyone else got a bugged copy of some kind (or if I'm just that much of a hater). Because no matter how hard I try, I just really, genuinely cannot understand the average/majority rating of this book?

The writing ranges from dry to pointedly (in other words, unnaturally) quotable, and the dialogue is somehow even more stilted and unrealistically grammatically flawless than the narration. A few spoken lines toward the end literally go on uninterrupted and with no stuttering or backtracking for 100+ words; virtually no one, let alone who's suffered recent repeated physical trauma, is that eloquent. Information is revealed in stilted blocks and repeated ten times over. I don't think any teenager -- or person at all -- in the history of cell phones has ever texted like the teenagers in this book are written as doing.

In terms of substance, there's a lot left to be desired as well. All of the individual narrative threads -- or at least most of them -- would make interesting stories, but here they're all kind of crammed into one unbalanced mess. Is the central plot supposed to be Daunis's complex relationship with her family members and community? Her desire to pursue a career in medicine/science and unite traditional and more modern "scientific" practices? Her recovering from and learning about the factors leading up to her best friend's sudden, tragic death? Her role as an undercover informant in an FBI investigation involving meth and her community (as much suspension of disbelief as that requires)? Her and Jamie's relationship? A general critical overview of the treatment of Indigenous women in American and Canadian society? It's never really decided, and so we jump awkwardly from one to the other without more natural transitions or better multitasking, leading to really overall odd pacing.

The general emotional pacing never quite hits either. A significant medical detail about the protagonist is made explicit for the first time 70% in and never serves any real relevance (and is outright contradicted or ignored at other times). Major traumatic events like the murder of Daunis's best friend and

her being raped by a friend's father

are brushed off like minor hindrances -- there's no "right" way to react to trauma, but it feels so strange for the plot to just trudge on with no in-depth reflection, as though these things (particularly the latter) have been carelessly thrown in just to add to Daunis's hardships.

The characters -- including, perhaps especially Daunis -- lack depth, whittled down to one trait (not even one that is shown, but told... multiple times). The supporting cast especially kind of blends together as a result of that weird pacing and unrealistic, stilted dialogue. I couldn't get a real sense of any of their motivations, so the culprit reveal and relationships all feel more than lackluster. In that regard, the romance is particularly egregious, even putting aside the core issues with

a relationship between a 22-year-old government agent (as much questionable as that is in and of itself) and an 18-year-old college student he's directly supervising in an investigation

.

Overall, quite disappointing execution of multiple interesting premises, and I remain bewildered by the overwhelmingly positive response. Perhaps it was a great book for many others, but nothing about it ended up clicking or sitting well with me.

(Also, urine, even your own, is not actually sterile! Please do not use it as a substitute for hydrogen peroxide. I know this is set in 2004 -- as little as there is to solidly ground it there -- and a lot of people believe that myth even today, but it just feels... irresponsible to include in a book like this, especially framed as an objective valuable fact.)

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margaret_k30's review

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dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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erebus53's review

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adventurous challenging dark hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Set in 2004, this is the story of Daunis Fontaine, a hockey player, fresh out of high school and preparing to go to college. Living in a town where enrolled Indigenous people get "per-cap" payments from tribal financial investments (mainly the casino) she is stuck between having one family of rich White background, and one family that is Indigenous, though she is not enrolled as a tribal member.

She is plugging on with things despite her favourite uncle having died, her grandmother being in palliative care, injuries having taken her off the ice, and having to make some hard decisions. There is a new guy in her brother's team, from out of town, and she is roped in to be his Ambassador and show him around.. but no she is NOT interested in dating "hockey guys". One of her childhood friends seems to have started relying meth. He's acting erratic and this is just the start of some life threatening chaos.

This is only the second book I have ever read that focuses on the Anishinaabeg (Nish) people of North America, in the area of the Great Lakes where arbitrary laws of settlers divide the people by a geo-political border between Canada and USA.

The main character is curious and scientific and super geeky, hoping to get into medical training. I personally love all her scientific naming of things, as that hits me where I live, and the puzzle solving she does is laid out and methodical so that the reader isn't left behind if things start getting complex. Her work on traditional indigenous medicine and scientific exploration describes a fusion between traditional practice and modern life; that both are valuable and do not deny each other.

I notice that this is, thematically, a very crepuscular book. Most of it is set in morning and evening, with young people and elders, and during the months of spring and autumn/fall, when the mushrooms abound — times of change, for looking back and forward; reviewing and planning. It also considers setting and respecting personal boundaries, and our decisions and their repercussions.. all this with a main character who seeks to understand herself, her values, her peoples and their history... and to understand how love can work when you don't always agree with another person. It's pretty rich.

Honestly though.. this book is gripping. There are continual revelations and twists, but they aren't weird or arbitrary. I wanted to know more and did not want to put it down. Every time something big happened I had to remind myself to take a time out to savour it.

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aasiy4h's review against another edition

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adventurous funny inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

i went into this book with complete opposite expectations to what i got. there were many times within the first half when i felt like putting it down solely because of the writing style. it just felt too basic for me i just didnt like it. but when the pace and plot started picking up it got better and easier to read but it still just wasnt a book i would have picked up based on the plot. i just loved the cover lol. so really it just comes down to my own personal opinion but it wasnt the best for me so its an average 3/5 stars.

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