A review by grey_jayne
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This is a book where you need to heed the trigger warnings, especially for trans people.  Manhunt's intent is to be extreme and, at this, it excels.  Somehow, it manages to be tender as well with moments of pure love and some of the most lovingly explicit queer sex scenes I've ever read.  Gretchen Felker-Martin has provided us with an honest and authentic portrayal of trans lives, be it dystopian or otherwise. It's a very important book.

The reason I'm not shouting out a 5 star review for this book is that I think Walking Dead desensitized me for this kind of story, especially because the feral men don't appear in this story as much as you'd think, leaving the TERFs as the primary villain.  This is person on person ugliness, although this time the focus is on the divide between trans people (and the people who love them) and transphobes.  This made the middle of the book harrowing, yet dense. We also start getting sections where we're following the TERFs, which I found to be fairly challenging. It's a book where I wish everyone would read it for the message but you do need to have endurance for dark and disgusting content.  

I wish Gretchen the best with Manhunt because I could see it being too much for the average person. It's intense yet also loving and I'm going to miss the characters.
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