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A review by leafblade
Fatima Tate Takes The Cake by Khadijah VanBrakle
2.0
I recieved an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I hate to give this book the same rating the raging homophobes are giving it, but at least it's for a different reason I guess?
To start with what I liked, this book didn't introduce the love interest in the conventional way. Chapter 1 he's already kissing the MC, and from then onwards we get a narrative of things being so good, so great, that it makes us think maybe it's TOO perfect. It disguises itself as a flaw, but it's actually intentional (I think) that in the end helps with Fatima's realizations about him.
However, the writing style and the way the characters think, behave and speak felt too juvenile for me, including the adults. And this could be an issue of the author's writing style, but I prefer to see it as an issue of age target. If this were marketed towards the 13-15 year old audience, it would be fine. But the characters are way too old to be the way they are, and most of them end up coming out as childish. This was a bit too much for me, since I don't gravitate towards those types of stories at all.
And as of the ending, I really think what this book tries to do is very important, but I don't think the execution was quite okay. Through the book, the MC is very adamant about her whole life crushing down if something gets out, we get multiple snippets into people's reactions to believe that it would be like so, and when her secrets get revealed.... nothing bad at all happens? I feel gaslighted as a reader lol. It's disingenuous to say to abuse victims that nothing will change if they fight with abuse, that their lives will continue just like they were before but without the abuser in them. The final chapter makes it seem like the only thing possibly going wrong-ish in Fatima's life is missing Raheem, or feeling stupid, but it had already been proven that this guy had A HUGE impact on their community and what people thought about lots of things, that he had the money to ruin her life, that he could find out where she was at all times, that he knew where she lived and wouldn't doubt to show up unannounced to her house. All of this just disappears in a Scooby Doo-like scene of "and I would've had my way if it wasn't for you, meddling kids!", which does more bad than good to the whole abuse conversation.
A few more rounds of editing, or an agent that dared to keep spinning the author's ideas until they were more solid, would've changed the quality of this book drastically.
I hate to give this book the same rating the raging homophobes are giving it, but at least it's for a different reason I guess?
To start with what I liked, this book didn't introduce the love interest in the conventional way. Chapter 1 he's already kissing the MC, and from then onwards we get a narrative of things being so good, so great, that it makes us think maybe it's TOO perfect. It disguises itself as a flaw, but it's actually intentional (I think) that in the end helps with Fatima's realizations about him.
However, the writing style and the way the characters think, behave and speak felt too juvenile for me, including the adults. And this could be an issue of the author's writing style, but I prefer to see it as an issue of age target. If this were marketed towards the 13-15 year old audience, it would be fine. But the characters are way too old to be the way they are, and most of them end up coming out as childish. This was a bit too much for me, since I don't gravitate towards those types of stories at all.
And as of the ending, I really think what this book tries to do is very important, but I don't think the execution was quite okay. Through the book, the MC is very adamant about her whole life crushing down if something gets out, we get multiple snippets into people's reactions to believe that it would be like so, and when her secrets get revealed.... nothing bad at all happens? I feel gaslighted as a reader lol. It's disingenuous to say to abuse victims that nothing will change if they fight with abuse, that their lives will continue just like they were before but without the abuser in them. The final chapter makes it seem like the only thing possibly going wrong-ish in Fatima's life is missing Raheem, or feeling stupid, but it had already been proven that this guy had A HUGE impact on their community and what people thought about lots of things, that he had the money to ruin her life, that he could find out where she was at all times, that he knew where she lived and wouldn't doubt to show up unannounced to her house. All of this just disappears in a Scooby Doo-like scene of "and I would've had my way if it wasn't for you, meddling kids!", which does more bad than good to the whole abuse conversation.
A few more rounds of editing, or an agent that dared to keep spinning the author's ideas until they were more solid, would've changed the quality of this book drastically.