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A review by lezreadalot
Tripping Arcadia by Kit Mayquist
4.0
The human body, I believe, if it possesses a soul, can only contain so much anger before it surrenders.
3.5 stars. I'm ending it on a mostly good note, but there were several moments in this book where I just didn't know how to feel about it. I felt like the book itself didn't know what it was about. For the longest time, I was not a fan of Lena. I'm very cool with unlikeable protagonists, but I kept feeling like I was meant to be relating to her, and I just could not. To start from the top, this is about Lena, a med school dropout who finds employment with a rich family as the assistant to the family doctor. She feels an alluring attraction to the daughter, and a slow growing friendship with the son/patient, but there are dark secrets surrounding the elite family and she soon finds herself playing a dangerous role in the name of vengeance.
So like, angry queer girls, revenge, punching up at the rich? I'm ALL ABOUT IT. But the start of the book did very little to convince me of anything. I don't really need a huge reason for a character to want to hit back at the rich, but Lena was so disconnected from her family (her mother and father and brother) that her crusade against Martin seemed sudden and overwrought, especially the extent to which she took it. And trust me, I can't believe that's something that I'M saying. But I just felt like whatever hook there was that was supposed to get us on board with Lena's plans... it just wasn't strong enough. I moved through the book with the sense like... yeah, I know why I should be rooting for Lena (and I'm not saying I wasn't; I was) but the text just didn't go far enough in taking me there, you know? IDK. I was dissatisfied, as I so often am dissatisfied, with most of the class commentary attempted. Lena's mother and father and friends could and should have played a way bigger role imo, especially near the end. That was when we needed some disparate voices, and the lack was sorely felt.
That said, the ending did end up making up for some of my earlier disappointment, and was what made me round up instead of down on this 3.5. The relationship between Jonathon and Lena was beautiful, and I ended up loving them just as much as I loved the romance with Audrey and Lena. Romance isn't really central to the novel, but I did enjoy that it was very deeply interwoven. The novel does live up to the tagline: it has a very gothic, lonely feeling, amidst all the elite partying and debauchery. I'm tempted to make a Gatsby comparison, even as someone who's never read or seen it. The light mystery aspects were good (though it's a stretch to call this a mystery) and even though I found the ending far too rushed to really love it, I did like the elements of it?
Listened to the audiobook as read by Carlotta Brentan, and it was probably what I enjoyed most about the book. Really good performance. Ultimately, I liked this enough and had a good enough time with this author's writing that I'll definitely try him again. This just wasn't all I wanted it to be.
Content warnings: