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A review by erebus53
Freeing Grace by Charity Norman
2.0
Yet another book for which I am not the target audience; this tells the story of a teen pregnancy that ends with a tragic death, and a baby caught in custody proceedings.
CW: emotional abuse, gun violence, car crash, animal cruelty, suicidal ideation
It's not my favourite flavour of entertainment to have a story told from the point of view of entitled Capitalists. The main characters are people of means who spend time planning expensive trips and things. One of the protagonists is a supposedly "charming" Kiwi bloke but his unassuming approachability just comes off as lazy and entitled rubbish wrapped in a casing of emotionally repressed masculine posturing.. then again he was a banker.
I was very put off by the pervasive air of casual Sexism, Racism and Ableism peppered through the whole book. I nearly stopped reading a third of the way into it, because every single character seemed to get Rated when they were described (because it's not enough to say that someone was tall - for some reason you need to hear in detail, whether or not their assets were attractive enough or their smile made them seem beddable) and that both the male and female characters had the habit of slut-shaming, describing forthright women as "stroppy", and using unkind names for women likening them to dogs and pigs. The way that mental health and anxiety were dealt with was not fun for me at all. It was all heavily stigmatised, and there was a lot of victim blaming. The only mention of homosexuality was a woman challenging her own homophobia as she tried to figure out her feelings about her husband leaving her for another man.
Written in 2011 I was struck by how old fashioned this story felt. The idea of a phone hanging on the wall and ringing at inopportune times placed this story firmly in the past, for me.
By far, the most likeable characters in the story were the prospective adoptive parents, and I nearly stopped reading again halfway through the book because the tension in it just made the whole situation seem unwinnable. It was a heck of a mess and I felt like an easy resolution would be possible if only people actually talked to each other. I felt like most of the conflict in the entire story was caused by people not communicating or trusting those around them. That sort of things is a huge chore for me to read through.
For all its disaster, I almost liked the last quarter of the book, but it was hardly a payoff or my investment. This was yet another example of my compulsive and masochistic desire to complete things that I start... somebody save me from myself.
CW: emotional abuse, gun violence, car crash, animal cruelty, suicidal ideation
It's not my favourite flavour of entertainment to have a story told from the point of view of entitled Capitalists. The main characters are people of means who spend time planning expensive trips and things. One of the protagonists is a supposedly "charming" Kiwi bloke but his unassuming approachability just comes off as lazy and entitled rubbish wrapped in a casing of emotionally repressed masculine posturing.. then again he was a banker.
I was very put off by the pervasive air of casual Sexism, Racism and Ableism peppered through the whole book. I nearly stopped reading a third of the way into it, because every single character seemed to get Rated when they were described (because it's not enough to say that someone was tall - for some reason you need to hear in detail, whether or not their assets were attractive enough or their smile made them seem beddable) and that both the male and female characters had the habit of slut-shaming, describing forthright women as "stroppy", and using unkind names for women likening them to dogs and pigs. The way that mental health and anxiety were dealt with was not fun for me at all. It was all heavily stigmatised, and there was a lot of victim blaming. The only mention of homosexuality was a woman challenging her own homophobia as she tried to figure out her feelings about her husband leaving her for another man.
Written in 2011 I was struck by how old fashioned this story felt. The idea of a phone hanging on the wall and ringing at inopportune times placed this story firmly in the past, for me.
By far, the most likeable characters in the story were the prospective adoptive parents, and I nearly stopped reading again halfway through the book because the tension in it just made the whole situation seem unwinnable. It was a heck of a mess and I felt like an easy resolution would be possible if only people actually talked to each other. I felt like most of the conflict in the entire story was caused by people not communicating or trusting those around them. That sort of things is a huge chore for me to read through.
For all its disaster, I almost liked the last quarter of the book, but it was hardly a payoff or my investment. This was yet another example of my compulsive and masochistic desire to complete things that I start... somebody save me from myself.