Review by illiterate_princess - Shy Girl

illiterate_princess 's review for:

Shy Girl by Mia Ballard

2.75

This missed the mark for me. Conceptually really interesting, but didn’t stick the landing. Thoughts below but all spoilers.

I think the story would have been more effective with a few changes. Firstly, the timeline is too preposterous. Like seven years? I think it would have been better over several months to a couple years. But the huge spans of time kind of took me out of the story. And basically six years go by where she is just being abused and does nothing, then suddenly it’s like now she’s a dog and she’s animalistic and she’s getting violent. Second, whack ending. He gives her she needs to escape and be free, live her life or whatever, but instead she goes dog mode. I know it’s her being free but it just didn’t sit right with me. Also $200k for 7 years? That’s less than minimum wage. He promised $2400/week. That’s like $900k. And third, I think it would have been more interesting if she did have to deal with doing it 8 hours a day and then having to go back to normal life, but confronting the dehumanisation and slow transition to becoming an animal. Maybe she spends more and more time there, maybe he lets her leave less. But I think him taking her from the outset actually hurt the story and didn’t give her much to go from. Also where’d the OCD go? And I thought there would be more intersectional commentary since at the beginning she mentions that she’s Black but was called “Oreo” because her mom was half-white, and then a white man like literally turns a Black woman into a dog. Felt like maybe that should have been explored more.

Content Warnings