cardenie50 's review for:

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

2.0

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I did not enjoy this book. Premise has potential, which is why it gets 2 stars. But the execution was awful. Two of my pet peeves is when the protagonist just lets things happen to them and they are unchanged at the end of a story. I'm not trying to be cute. These things are basic storytelling. But passivity is Nella's full-time job. None of the characters have depth and only act to artificially advance the plot. POV jumping was sloppily done. Nothing truly happens until the last 80 pages or so. The so-called conspiracy is corny. Ironically, this story could have worked much better as satire. And in short story form like the ones in those old Alfred Hitchcock anthologies. But she would need to turn up the weirdness so that the corniness can actually be terrifying. Red flag when this was compared to the movie Get Out. Copying something truly original only ends up being a cheap imitation. Read Luster or Legendborn instead, unless you want instruction on how not to write a story.