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A review by ellieafterall
What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arnold
3.0
Consider-what are you made of? Also, remember - you don't owe anyone a slice of your soul. Not your parents. Not your friends. Not your teachers or your lovers or your enemies. And you don't have to listen to anyone who tells you what girls are made of. Decide on your own what your heart is. Protect it. Enjoy it. Share it, if you want. You get this one body and this one hundred years. Love it, love it, please, love it.
This book made me severely uncomfortable. And as someone who is okay with being uncomfortable, especially when it is in relation to the horrors young women have to go through, this was a disappointment. I had such high hopes for this book, which, in hindsight, was probably not a good idea. Putting expectations on a book that does everything in its power to break against expectations is almost redundant, so I am sorry for that. I just found it...messy. It wasn't the terrifying imagery that kept being brought up - I saw the point in the messy, traumatizing scenes of the women being tortured. I sat through all of the chicken vs egg metaphors, the pining for a boy, the alcoholic mother, and the pet shelter stories. I read it all.
There it is - my own beating heart. I listen, I try to understand what it means, what it wants.
The problem is that it was laid out in this mishap of events, and that was confusing. I didn't know if we were in the current timeline or the past several times throughout the book, and many scenes felt structured and didn't flow with the story at all. There is a scene where she stalks her ex-boyfriend for a whole chapter, and that is all. They just look at each other, and then she leaves. This is never brought up again. I don't even know. I have to confess that I prefer the author's note to almost everything written in here; her explanation of why she wrote this was the thing I was expecting when I read this book. I see many elements in this book that I could've liked - the girls supporting each other, the discussion of girls being whatever the hell they wanted to be, breaking free from an emotionally detached mother...but it didn't work well together. I didn't like the random Christian imagery scattered throughout the book. That was definitely the worst part.
"As long as there have been women," Mom told me, "there have been ways to punish them for being women."
Anyway, the problem wasn't that Nina was unlikeable or some parts were gross, but that as a whole, the storyline went in a bunch of different directions. It was like I was reading from a diary, but out of order, and I could never keep track of what had already happened, or what was about to happen. I don't like that. I do appreciate Nina, though. I enjoyed her voice. She was almost so open with her thoughts that it felt like she was confessing them to me, in real life. Every single thought, even the horribly judgemental ones, that everyone thinks. I appreciated that. I just wish her story was told more coherently, without mentioning Jesus every 50 pages. Still a good book, though!
This book made me severely uncomfortable. And as someone who is okay with being uncomfortable, especially when it is in relation to the horrors young women have to go through, this was a disappointment. I had such high hopes for this book, which, in hindsight, was probably not a good idea. Putting expectations on a book that does everything in its power to break against expectations is almost redundant, so I am sorry for that. I just found it...messy. It wasn't the terrifying imagery that kept being brought up - I saw the point in the messy, traumatizing scenes of the women being tortured. I sat through all of the chicken vs egg metaphors, the pining for a boy, the alcoholic mother, and the pet shelter stories. I read it all.
There it is - my own beating heart. I listen, I try to understand what it means, what it wants.
The problem is that it was laid out in this mishap of events, and that was confusing. I didn't know if we were in the current timeline or the past several times throughout the book, and many scenes felt structured and didn't flow with the story at all. There is a scene where she stalks her ex-boyfriend for a whole chapter, and that is all. They just look at each other, and then she leaves. This is never brought up again. I don't even know. I have to confess that I prefer the author's note to almost everything written in here; her explanation of why she wrote this was the thing I was expecting when I read this book. I see many elements in this book that I could've liked - the girls supporting each other, the discussion of girls being whatever the hell they wanted to be, breaking free from an emotionally detached mother...but it didn't work well together. I didn't like the random Christian imagery scattered throughout the book. That was definitely the worst part.
"As long as there have been women," Mom told me, "there have been ways to punish them for being women."
Anyway, the problem wasn't that Nina was unlikeable or some parts were gross, but that as a whole, the storyline went in a bunch of different directions. It was like I was reading from a diary, but out of order, and I could never keep track of what had already happened, or what was about to happen. I don't like that. I do appreciate Nina, though. I enjoyed her voice. She was almost so open with her thoughts that it felt like she was confessing them to me, in real life. Every single thought, even the horribly judgemental ones, that everyone thinks. I appreciated that. I just wish her story was told more coherently, without mentioning Jesus every 50 pages. Still a good book, though!