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A review by fromtheyellowchair
Collateral by Ellen Hopkins
1.0
I could go on forever about why this book is bad. Aside from the weak writing, it has some of the worst representations of mental illnesses I've ever seen. Any character depth was built around wildly inaccurate stereotypes.
"One woman at the shelter was married to an Army vet. It took more than two years for his PTSD to kick all the way into gear. He never scared me, she said. But one day, it was like the light went out in his eyes. I swear I was looking evil in the face. I thought he'd kill me. He claimed it was the heat that set him off, taking him back to Fallujah."
Portraying veterans or people with PTSD in general as completely unstable individuals who could lose control and attack a loved one at any minute and OCD as simply a preference for things to be in order is harmful and borderline offensive.
If the author put half as much time researching mental illnesses as she did researching details of a soldier's life that were completely inconsequential to the plot, she could have put together a somewhat decent novel.
"One woman at the shelter was married to an Army vet. It took more than two years for his PTSD to kick all the way into gear. He never scared me, she said. But one day, it was like the light went out in his eyes. I swear I was looking evil in the face. I thought he'd kill me. He claimed it was the heat that set him off, taking him back to Fallujah."
Portraying veterans or people with PTSD in general as completely unstable individuals who could lose control and attack a loved one at any minute and OCD as simply a preference for things to be in order is harmful and borderline offensive.
If the author put half as much time researching mental illnesses as she did researching details of a soldier's life that were completely inconsequential to the plot, she could have put together a somewhat decent novel.