A review by reneelizabeth_
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

dark emotional sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Pizza Girl was a devastating, gut-wrenchingly vulnerable exploration of human experience and human connection. After finding out she is pregnant at 18, the protagonist's - whom we only find out her name at the end of the novel - whole identity revolves around her being a pregnant Pizza Girl. As she contemplates the hopelessness of her life and situation, she is begged by a desperate mother to deliver a specialty Pizza to her home.

This relationship starts an infatuation and longing for connection that Pizza Girl becomes obsessed with. To which she later reflects: 

"I would’ve found something else to lose myself in—if you were pushed off a cliff, you’d grab hold of anything resembling safety."


Jean Kyoung Frazier creates such interesting and complex characters and winds them together in a way that makes the reader reflect on societal behaviours. Her writing was simple but so beautiful and quite a few of her lines made my gut wrench, like: 

"I wondered what animals lived under the shadows of my bones. I hoped they were animals of nobility—lions and eagles and horses with long manes—and not what I fearedvultures and wolves and drooling hyenas."


An honestly devastating, yet beautiful read.
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