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If two people could make each other smile and laugh and forget all the pain and darkness in the world for a moment, why should we feel ashamed of it?
A couple years back, I did a "New Adult Experiment" and attempted to find the hidden gems amid a genre full of, um... crap. One of those gems was Raeder's [b:Unteachable|20877902|Unteachable|Leah Raeder|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1395677357s/20877902.jpg|25207434] - a lyrical, different kind of romance.
Since then, Leah Raeder has released two more books - [b:Black Iris|18829666|Black Iris|Leah Raeder|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1420737066s/18829666.jpg|26771709] and [b:Cam Girl|23430483|Cam Girl|Leah Raeder|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1441208688s/23430483.jpg|42991007] - and I think it would be a disservice to potential readers and the author if I didn't clear something up. These latter two books, [b:Cam Girl|23430483|Cam Girl|Leah Raeder|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1441208688s/23430483.jpg|42991007] especially, are not like [b:Unteachable|20877902|Unteachable|Leah Raeder|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1395677357s/20877902.jpg|25207434]. They have Leah's gorgeous writing style, of course, but they are completely different beasts.
Wait, so they're not love stories?
Oh no, they are. But I'm not sure they quite fit in the regular romance section. [b:Cam Girl|23430483|Cam Girl|Leah Raeder|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1441208688s/23430483.jpg|42991007] is about love, and yet it also demands that you face questions that need to be asked - about the nature of gender, gender identity, and sexuality and about their relationship to love. Is it possible for love to transcend sexuality?
Because I follow Leah Raeder online, I felt like I knew a lot about this book before I started it. So I'm not sure if that's the reason I guessed certain outcomes, but either way, it didn't really matter to me. The book managed to be powerful enough just by containing these things; it didn't need to be shocking as well.
If you're really an artist, I thought, you'll find a way to make art however you can, like Bukowski said. With half your body gone. With soot and a cave wall. With your own blood.
Raeder's third book reintroduces us to her trademark style of poetic prose and vivid, colourful imagery. Art and colours are used as metaphors, as well as for mood. The narrator - Vada - is an artist who suffered damage to her drawing arm in an accident. Broke and at rock bottom, she takes a job as a cam girl.
The book offers a graphic depiction of the sex trade. Vada acknowledges the potentially demoralizing nature of live cams, but the sex trade is here a mostly empowering thing - a fact which I'm sure will pave the way for many discussions about it. But, well, that's what Raeder does best: Facilitates discussion on the things we don't often allow ourselves to think about.
It didn't get the full five rating for two reasons: 1) It was hard to maintain focus on the Ryan/Max subplot (though I did like the outcome), maybe because some of these secondary characters were not that interesting to me. And 2) This makes me sound like such a prude, but there was a little too much sex. At some points, it went past sexy and into repetitive.
But I did enjoy it a lot. Leah's writing just pulls me in every time. Some people call her books "dark" and I can completely see why, but I also don't think they are. I think they're like a light in the darkness, showing every horrific, beautiful human truth in a rainbow of colour.
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