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ruthnessly 's review for:
The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
by Elizabeth O'Roark
hated it.
a couple of things i disliked: the main characters, their relationships with everyone around them, how strange and odd it felt and how little it made me care about them as a unit or individually. don't understand how anyone would think this was funny banter tbh. i think the other two books i've read of hers did this much better. actively disliked drew. i'm not really a lover of the pop star~ thing in a book.
the main thing i disliked: the callous and frankly disgusting way this talks about somalia??? the male main character here is a dr who works in a refugee camp and the way it's dealt with in the book left me with SUCH a weird and odd taste in my mouth. the beginning of this book has a few jokes about it which...okay fine, i guess people make jokes, but it felt in particularly bad taste given the way the rest of the novel discusses it. and some of them just DIDN'T need to be there! also in the end, one of the main "crisis" points in this book is how dangerous somalia is and it was dealt with badly. i know next to nothing about the country, tbh, apart from what's occasionally on the news but if it made me feel uncomfortable w/ how this discussed it, i can't imagine how it would feel if you were more familiar or it was your own country!!!
the start of the book didn't grab me but i was happy enough to continue but the further into this i got the less and less comfortable i felt with this. i just don't think there were anywhere near enough nuance or depth given to this? i understand it's a romance novel, okay, but if you don't want to deal with harsher topics like this, make him be a doctor somewhere else. i just don't think there's any excuse for the treatment of somalia in this book. i really don't.
i'm willing to read from this author again -- i'll finish this series out at some point -- but it's given me pause. with kindness, it was at least gauche. this is a clumsy and very misguided attempt to discuss anything relating to emergency doctors in a country experiencing significant tension!!! i don't understand why there had to be all white saviour-y nonsense in this. to what end? to make her handsome square jawed doctor look good for the readers? ridiculous.
a couple of things i disliked: the main characters, their relationships with everyone around them, how strange and odd it felt and how little it made me care about them as a unit or individually. don't understand how anyone would think this was funny banter tbh. i think the other two books i've read of hers did this much better. actively disliked drew. i'm not really a lover of the pop star~ thing in a book.
the main thing i disliked: the callous and frankly disgusting way this talks about somalia??? the male main character here is a dr who works in a refugee camp and the way it's dealt with in the book left me with SUCH a weird and odd taste in my mouth. the beginning of this book has a few jokes about it which...okay fine, i guess people make jokes, but it felt in particularly bad taste given the way the rest of the novel discusses it. and some of them just DIDN'T need to be there! also in the end, one of the main "crisis" points in this book is how dangerous somalia is and it was dealt with badly. i know next to nothing about the country, tbh, apart from what's occasionally on the news but if it made me feel uncomfortable w/ how this discussed it, i can't imagine how it would feel if you were more familiar or it was your own country!!!
the start of the book didn't grab me but i was happy enough to continue but the further into this i got the less and less comfortable i felt with this. i just don't think there were anywhere near enough nuance or depth given to this? i understand it's a romance novel, okay, but if you don't want to deal with harsher topics like this, make him be a doctor somewhere else. i just don't think there's any excuse for the treatment of somalia in this book. i really don't.
i'm willing to read from this author again -- i'll finish this series out at some point -- but it's given me pause. with kindness, it was at least gauche. this is a clumsy and very misguided attempt to discuss anything relating to emergency doctors in a country experiencing significant tension!!! i don't understand why there had to be all white saviour-y nonsense in this. to what end? to make her handsome square jawed doctor look good for the readers? ridiculous.