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epellicci 's review for:
Poor Girls
by Clare Whitfield
DID NOT FINISH: 25%
**Thank you to the publishers Bloomsbury, and Netgalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review**
I wanted to love this so badly. A gang of women coming together in protest of their position in society, to steal the luxury life they could never earn. It promised found family, action and an interesting cast of thoughtful and sparky women. Unfortunately, it didn't deliver.
Eleanor is painfully naive and childish. The kind of girl with no impulse control, she gets swept up in whatever attention is thrown her way. It was incredibly hard to believe that this inexperienced, vapid girl had been selected by an established gang to join their ranks based on witnessed potential. We're shown snippets of her family life and home, but not nearly enough of "before" for me to feel invested in Eleanor's motivation. She spends a lot of time thinking unflattering things about the elderly customers she serves as a waitress, but the engagement with class politics of the time is surprisingly shallow, given this is meant to be at the core of the book.
The story jumps about between settings and characters in a way I found jarring. In the scene when Eleanor tells her family she's leaving for a new life in London, her mother is distraught. Half a page later, she's sneaking into her bedroom to gift her a machete. It felt surreal.
I don't know if the digital ACR is just very unedited, but the final straw for me was about 25% of the way though, when one of the girls in the gang rechristens Eleanor as "Nell". The narrator had already been switching unreliably between referring to her as Eleanor and Nell for the entire book. To learn that this slightly confusing slip was actually a central plot point for Eleanor's characterisation within the gang that the author had let slip was utterly disappointing. I gave up shortly after this, as reading the book had become something I had to force myself to do.
I wanted to love this so badly. A gang of women coming together in protest of their position in society, to steal the luxury life they could never earn. It promised found family, action and an interesting cast of thoughtful and sparky women. Unfortunately, it didn't deliver.
Eleanor is painfully naive and childish. The kind of girl with no impulse control, she gets swept up in whatever attention is thrown her way. It was incredibly hard to believe that this inexperienced, vapid girl had been selected by an established gang to join their ranks based on witnessed potential. We're shown snippets of her family life and home, but not nearly enough of "before" for me to feel invested in Eleanor's motivation. She spends a lot of time thinking unflattering things about the elderly customers she serves as a waitress, but the engagement with class politics of the time is surprisingly shallow, given this is meant to be at the core of the book.
The story jumps about between settings and characters in a way I found jarring. In the scene when Eleanor tells her family she's leaving for a new life in London, her mother is distraught. Half a page later, she's sneaking into her bedroom to gift her a machete. It felt surreal.
I don't know if the digital ACR is just very unedited, but the final straw for me was about 25% of the way though, when one of the girls in the gang rechristens Eleanor as "Nell". The narrator had already been switching unreliably between referring to her as Eleanor and Nell for the entire book. To learn that this slightly confusing slip was actually a central plot point for Eleanor's characterisation within the gang that the author had let slip was utterly disappointing. I gave up shortly after this, as reading the book had become something I had to force myself to do.