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A review by justgeekingby
Charming by Jade Linwood
1.0
Originally posted on Just Geeking by.
This review is for an ARC provided with thanks by NetGalley and Rebellion. While there is a chance that some of the quotes mentioned in this review may not make it to the finished book, I think it is important that disabled readers are aware that they existed in the first place.
Content warnings:
This book also contains a disabled slur (crippled), derogatory descriptions of characters (see review for more details) and one of the crippled characters is called “Twisty”.
Within the first few pages of Charming by Jade Linwood describes a character as "being short and oddly shaped, he is what you might call ‘pre-crouched’", a description that I had to look at twice and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it at the time. I wasn’t sure whether Linwood was describing a character with a physical disability or a non-human character. Deciding to give Linwood the benefit of the doubt, I continued reading. The character in question is Roland, Prince Charming’s partner in crime and while I came across no other descriptions that worried me, I did notice that Linwood seemed to take every opportunity to insult Roland. From how he smells, to what he’s wearing, and even his choice of food, the reader is told about how awful and smelly he is.
Still, I kept going, thinking that this was just a writing technique, albeit a bad one, to draw a comparison to Prince Charming who is of course, completely the opposite. From looking at other reviews I believe that some of this was supposed to be a type of humour, personally I’ve never been one for humour that has to knock someone down to be funny, but that’s just me. The more I read I was fairly certain that Charming was never going to rise above a three-star rating for me. That was until I got to the third princess’ story, Rapunzel, or as she’s called in Charming, Doctor Emilia Rapunzel.
As Emilia tells her story she recounts the moments that she and the other orphans are standing waiting to be inspected by a visitor, and that’s when Lindwood drops “crippled” into the dialogue several times. You might be thinking, they’re just uneducated children, they don’t know any better. No, but the author writing the book does and there are several ways that the children could have described the disabled orphans without using a slur. Even worse, one of the disabled authors is called “Twisty”. I was gobsmacked at that one.
I expected Roland to be revealed to be a Dwarf at some point, however, when we get to Snow White’s story (Marie Blanche’s story) Dwarves are mentioned throughout without any belittling comments or mention of their short statures. In fact, Linwood speaks of them in quite high regard throughout which suggests that Roland’s description was indeed about a physical disability.
The entire book is also written from an omnipotent perspective speaking to the writer directly just like a narrator from a children’s animated movie. From the way Linwood describes characters as either ugly or perfect, it feels as if she took a lot of inspiration from Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and not in a good way.
As I was not enjoying the style of writing, and did not want to find out what other derogatory descriptions or slurs awaited I chose to DNF at 62%.
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This review is for an ARC provided with thanks by NetGalley and Rebellion. While there is a chance that some of the quotes mentioned in this review may not make it to the finished book, I think it is important that disabled readers are aware that they existed in the first place.
Content warnings:
Spoiler
This book contains scenes of violence, gore, death, poisoning and betrayal. There are abusive relationships present; an emotionally abusive relationship between daughter and stepdaughter which includes gaslighting, and a verbal and physically abusive relationship between adopted daughter and mother/mentor.This book also contains a disabled slur (crippled), derogatory descriptions of characters (see review for more details) and one of the crippled characters is called “Twisty”.
Within the first few pages of Charming by Jade Linwood describes a character as "being short and oddly shaped, he is what you might call ‘pre-crouched’", a description that I had to look at twice and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it at the time. I wasn’t sure whether Linwood was describing a character with a physical disability or a non-human character. Deciding to give Linwood the benefit of the doubt, I continued reading. The character in question is Roland, Prince Charming’s partner in crime and while I came across no other descriptions that worried me, I did notice that Linwood seemed to take every opportunity to insult Roland. From how he smells, to what he’s wearing, and even his choice of food, the reader is told about how awful and smelly he is.
Still, I kept going, thinking that this was just a writing technique, albeit a bad one, to draw a comparison to Prince Charming who is of course, completely the opposite. From looking at other reviews I believe that some of this was supposed to be a type of humour, personally I’ve never been one for humour that has to knock someone down to be funny, but that’s just me. The more I read I was fairly certain that Charming was never going to rise above a three-star rating for me. That was until I got to the third princess’ story, Rapunzel, or as she’s called in Charming, Doctor Emilia Rapunzel.
As Emilia tells her story she recounts the moments that she and the other orphans are standing waiting to be inspected by a visitor, and that’s when Lindwood drops “crippled” into the dialogue several times. You might be thinking, they’re just uneducated children, they don’t know any better. No, but the author writing the book does and there are several ways that the children could have described the disabled orphans without using a slur. Even worse, one of the disabled authors is called “Twisty”. I was gobsmacked at that one.
I expected Roland to be revealed to be a Dwarf at some point, however, when we get to Snow White’s story (Marie Blanche’s story) Dwarves are mentioned throughout without any belittling comments or mention of their short statures. In fact, Linwood speaks of them in quite high regard throughout which suggests that Roland’s description was indeed about a physical disability.
The entire book is also written from an omnipotent perspective speaking to the writer directly just like a narrator from a children’s animated movie. From the way Linwood describes characters as either ugly or perfect, it feels as if she took a lot of inspiration from Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and not in a good way.
As I was not enjoying the style of writing, and did not want to find out what other derogatory descriptions or slurs awaited I chose to DNF at 62%.