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A review by khopeisz
Godshot by Chelsea Bieker
3.0
Picked this up cus I was in the mood for something plotty and to compliment sandwich this book, it was exactly plotty in the way I was craving. So cheers to that.
this book could have been trimmed significantly if we’d cut down on the anecdotes about how gross the living quarters were. These descriptors were so redundant they became comically incredulous, like “what other disgusting thing do I get to read about next” lol. Also I was really pendulum swung from one character to the next, sometimes given intricate details of people I would never again meet. I understand the need to juxtapose the MC from the cheerleaders and the Tent City girlies, but okay you describe them in detail and they don’t come back? :/
The mother-daughter thing…I wasn’t moved by it, sorry. I get to know the mom for two seconds before she slingshots outta town. Made no real connection to her and maybe that was the point? I dunno. We spend so much time thinking about her (in the MC’s head) and there was really no complexity to her. Just the same old story of a woman from a small town who wants to make it big. I’ve read that. What about the MC’s mom sets her apart from the other woman in books whose motives were similarly shallow? I wanted more complexity, but everyone sort of behaved exactly as I’d expected. Which I guess in the way of a plotty book is a nice, predictable comfort?
Aside: (spoiler) um, why didn’t Florin and Daisy call the cops??
I had a fleeting thought at the end of my reading experience that this book could have been more effective in the third person narration. I dunno I think Emma Cline really had the best handle on how to write a first person narration about a teenaged girl in a cult. I know where the bar has been set! The narration in this book…the narrator is not 14 at the time she is narrating it and yet her recollection reads juvenile still. There isn’t any of that wise, older woman reflection one of the characters coincidentally claims she’ll develop thru the years. Maybe it’s to suggest she’s emotionally stunted? I dunno I think the writing was good, I’ve also read The Girls so!!!!
Should I parse a moral from this story? Maybe not but I’m a consumer of media and this is just what happens when you consume. Uh, narratively speaking (spoiler) I understand why the MC kept her baby. Morally speaking, I would not want to suggest that a child (the MC is a child) should keep a baby, especially one conceived under harmful circumstances. But the MC says some line about how she was not meant to connect with her own mother but instead she was always meant to be a mother. What? You’d just turned 15. “She should be at the club” is what Twitter once said. Yeah she can be a mother later but as an author, why not have the MC give the baby that was violently put into her (a girl who was 14 turning 15) up for adoption and heal? Be a child? Go get an education (I’m not even clear on where the MC’s education was at)? I’d like to think there was a lot of community building that happened off book that made it so the MC’s mothering would not be further trauma for her. But becoming a mother yourself is NOT how you heal yourself from the way you were raised and I’m really annoyed at that implication. And you named your child PEACH????
Oh, the romance novel segment was pretty irrelevant.
Occurred to me I need one more compliment to close the compliment sandwich. I can’t think of one so this sandwich is open-faced I guess lol.
this book could have been trimmed significantly if we’d cut down on the anecdotes about how gross the living quarters were. These descriptors were so redundant they became comically incredulous, like “what other disgusting thing do I get to read about next” lol. Also I was really pendulum swung from one character to the next, sometimes given intricate details of people I would never again meet. I understand the need to juxtapose the MC from the cheerleaders and the Tent City girlies, but okay you describe them in detail and they don’t come back? :/
The mother-daughter thing…I wasn’t moved by it, sorry. I get to know the mom for two seconds before she slingshots outta town. Made no real connection to her and maybe that was the point? I dunno. We spend so much time thinking about her (in the MC’s head) and there was really no complexity to her. Just the same old story of a woman from a small town who wants to make it big. I’ve read that. What about the MC’s mom sets her apart from the other woman in books whose motives were similarly shallow? I wanted more complexity, but everyone sort of behaved exactly as I’d expected. Which I guess in the way of a plotty book is a nice, predictable comfort?
Aside: (spoiler) um, why didn’t Florin and Daisy call the cops??
I had a fleeting thought at the end of my reading experience that this book could have been more effective in the third person narration. I dunno I think Emma Cline really had the best handle on how to write a first person narration about a teenaged girl in a cult. I know where the bar has been set! The narration in this book…the narrator is not 14 at the time she is narrating it and yet her recollection reads juvenile still. There isn’t any of that wise, older woman reflection one of the characters coincidentally claims she’ll develop thru the years. Maybe it’s to suggest she’s emotionally stunted? I dunno I think the writing was good, I’ve also read The Girls so!!!!
Should I parse a moral from this story? Maybe not but I’m a consumer of media and this is just what happens when you consume. Uh, narratively speaking (spoiler) I understand why the MC kept her baby. Morally speaking, I would not want to suggest that a child (the MC is a child) should keep a baby, especially one conceived under harmful circumstances. But the MC says some line about how she was not meant to connect with her own mother but instead she was always meant to be a mother. What? You’d just turned 15. “She should be at the club” is what Twitter once said. Yeah she can be a mother later but as an author, why not have the MC give the baby that was violently put into her (a girl who was 14 turning 15) up for adoption and heal? Be a child? Go get an education (I’m not even clear on where the MC’s education was at)? I’d like to think there was a lot of community building that happened off book that made it so the MC’s mothering would not be further trauma for her. But becoming a mother yourself is NOT how you heal yourself from the way you were raised and I’m really annoyed at that implication. And you named your child PEACH????
Oh, the romance novel segment was pretty irrelevant.
Occurred to me I need one more compliment to close the compliment sandwich. I can’t think of one so this sandwich is open-faced I guess lol.