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A review by lawyerlee
Suburban Hell by Maureen Kilmer
3.0
This was a quick read. But I didn’t buy into the premise and grow as invested as I had hoped to. The stakes felt artificial to me. And please know that I love fantasy, magical realism, sci fi, etc. Out there scenarios are not a problem for me. Ultimately I think the world building was perhaps lacking in a way that made it difficult for me to truly feel the weight of the situation. I could have stopped reading and not been annoyed by not knowing what happens.
For the most part I like the main character and how she's written. She's funny and relatable and feels like someone I might know in my life, in a good way. I appreciate the author's choice to have her ask herself if she's being swept up by a new Satanic Panic and relate experiences back to that moment in history.
Near the end of the book we get the line, “Suburban moms had saved the world.” I bristled a bit at this. It felt like a white feminism / girl power take on women and power. And if you believe that suburban white moms can save the world, just think what we could do if we consistently tried to make the world a better place for everyone (not just our own kids or people like us)! We end with the sense the main character has figured out how she wants to engage with the world in a meaningful way outside her immediate neighborhood. But in what seems to me to still be a very middle / upper middle class, white-washed manner.
For the most part I like the main character and how she's written. She's funny and relatable and feels like someone I might know in my life, in a good way. I appreciate the author's choice to have her ask herself if she's being swept up by a new Satanic Panic and relate experiences back to that moment in history.
Near the end of the book we get the line, “Suburban moms had saved the world.” I bristled a bit at this. It felt like a white feminism / girl power take on women and power. And if you believe that suburban white moms can save the world, just think what we could do if we consistently tried to make the world a better place for everyone (not just our own kids or people like us)! We end with the sense the main character has figured out how she wants to engage with the world in a meaningful way outside her immediate neighborhood. But in what seems to me to still be a very middle / upper middle class, white-washed manner.