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A review by tlwd
Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult
3.0
CW for this book:
You know those feel-good books that make you feel warm and fuzzy and like everything is going to be all right? This was not one of them. In fact, it was distinctly a feel-bad book: everything is terrible, the world is ending, and when you think you've hit bottom, things go from bad to worse. But I kept reading it.
There was something captivating about the writing. You can't fault that. I just wasn't the biggest fan of the contents of that writing. I felt there was some bad science, the investigation wasn't as tightly woven as I'd like (I read a lot of mysteries), and I didn't like how the author focused a lot of the message on the girls who falsely claimed to be sexually assaulted for the attention. She did mention that most women don't report cases of sexual assault and that it's quite difficult to prosecute (in that the evidence often isn't there, and that it's easy to get away with a relatively short sentence) but those were really in passing. The main message that stood out was that girls will claim assault for the attention, and that ruins innocent men's lives. Some of my friends have been victims of sexual assault (and their assailants got away with it), so that left a sour taste in my mouth that no amount of good writing and cool storyline weaving can take away.
Spoiler
sexual assault, pedophilia, incestYou know those feel-good books that make you feel warm and fuzzy and like everything is going to be all right? This was not one of them. In fact, it was distinctly a feel-bad book: everything is terrible, the world is ending, and when you think you've hit bottom, things go from bad to worse. But I kept reading it.
There was something captivating about the writing. You can't fault that. I just wasn't the biggest fan of the contents of that writing. I felt there was some bad science, the investigation wasn't as tightly woven as I'd like (I read a lot of mysteries), and I didn't like how the author focused a lot of the message on the girls who falsely claimed to be sexually assaulted for the attention. She did mention that most women don't report cases of sexual assault and that it's quite difficult to prosecute (in that the evidence often isn't there, and that it's easy to get away with a relatively short sentence) but those were really in passing. The main message that stood out was that girls will claim assault for the attention, and that ruins innocent men's lives. Some of my friends have been victims of sexual assault (and their assailants got away with it), so that left a sour taste in my mouth that no amount of good writing and cool storyline weaving can take away.