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minna1999 's review for:
She's Too Pretty to Burn
by Wendy Heard
I was really excited about this because nothing sounds better than sapphic Dorian Gray. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I the marketers made a mistake when they decided to compare this to The Picture of Dorian Gray, since it sets expectations too high. Sure, there are some similarities with the whole ethereal muse thing going on, but this book doesn’t explore morality like Dorian Gray does. It’s black and white. The people who do wrong things in this book are either sociopaths or innocent good people who strayed away from goodness for a while.
This brings me to my next point. I have said it before and I will say it once again: I hate thriller books where the “big bad” is just one mentally unstable person. Call it personal preference, or call it dislike of the stigmatization/vilification of certain mental illnesses and the perpetration of harmful, unfounded stereotypes about people with ASPD (or psychopaths, as the media loves calling them.) Don’t make your villain a psychopath. It’s lazy; it’s harmful; it’s boring.
Don’t get me wrong: the writing is great; it’s just the story that didn’t click with me. The two main characters are so unlikable it’s hard to root for them. Mick is a woe-is-me person with a victim mentality who cries about being too pretty, and Veronica is a self-absorbed invasive person with no respect for boundaries. To top it off, they’re in a very toxic relationship, one that doesn’t make very much sense, given the fact that this whole story, including their meeting and relationship, takes place over ten days.
The relationships themselves felt very underdeveloped to me. How did Veronica and Nico get so close? What’s up with Mick and her mother? It’s never really explained why their relationship is so dysfunctional. I also don’t get Nico and Veronica’s obsession with Mick. She’s as bland as they get. I thought it was just because she was pretty and they were shallow people, but then Nico says, “Mick is interesting. She’s unpredictable, she’s different. You’re show. She’s substance.” Substance where?
Sadly, this wasn’t the book for me, but I’d be willing to read something else by this author because the writing’s really good.
This brings me to my next point. I have said it before and I will say it once again: I hate thriller books where the “big bad” is just one mentally unstable person. Call it personal preference, or call it dislike of the stigmatization/vilification of certain mental illnesses and the perpetration of harmful, unfounded stereotypes about people with ASPD (or psychopaths, as the media loves calling them.) Don’t make your villain a psychopath. It’s lazy; it’s harmful; it’s boring.
Don’t get me wrong: the writing is great; it’s just the story that didn’t click with me. The two main characters are so unlikable it’s hard to root for them. Mick is a woe-is-me person with a victim mentality who cries about being too pretty, and Veronica is a self-absorbed invasive person with no respect for boundaries. To top it off, they’re in a very toxic relationship, one that doesn’t make very much sense, given the fact that this whole story, including their meeting and relationship, takes place over ten days.
The relationships themselves felt very underdeveloped to me. How did Veronica and Nico get so close? What’s up with Mick and her mother? It’s never really explained why their relationship is so dysfunctional. I also don’t get Nico and Veronica’s obsession with Mick. She’s as bland as they get. I thought it was just because she was pretty and they were shallow people, but then Nico says, “Mick is interesting. She’s unpredictable, she’s different. You’re show. She’s substance.” Substance where?
Sadly, this wasn’t the book for me, but I’d be willing to read something else by this author because the writing’s really good.