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A review by phaedraismyusername
Girls of Little Hope by Sam Beckbessinger, Dale Halvorsen
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
2.0
This could've done with some tightening up in my opinion, the fast pace but meandering writing style made reading some parts of this feel a little tedious. Mix that with the character voices all being incredibly similar despite supposedly being wildly different people and it just wasn't as compelling as a plot this wild and fun could have been.
They also really did not feel like teenage girls, they felt like what some guy writing a first draft of a novel thinks teenage girls are like. The author also fell into using some super tired tropes, and while I think the initial goal was to subvert the stereotypes (the fat girl, the oversexualised girl of colour, the repressed church queer girl, the "ugly" girl who grows up to be a pushy mother to her daughter, etc) I think it was just too much of a superficial attempt to be anything but a spectacular failure in that regard.
100 pages less and some more thoughtful character work and maybe another draft or two and I think this would absolutely have been a higher rating
They also really did not feel like teenage girls, they felt like what some guy writing a first draft of a novel thinks teenage girls are like. The author also fell into using some super tired tropes, and while I think the initial goal was to subvert the stereotypes (the fat girl, the oversexualised girl of colour, the repressed church queer girl, the "ugly" girl who grows up to be a pushy mother to her daughter, etc) I think it was just too much of a superficial attempt to be anything but a spectacular failure in that regard.
100 pages less and some more thoughtful character work and maybe another draft or two and I think this would absolutely have been a higher rating