A review by dashes101
Monster in the Middle by Tiphanie Yanique

adventurous emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

I picked this book up at my local library, where the blurb shaped it as a love story between Fly and Stela that was influenced by their entire family histories. As a sucker for generational stories and character driven books, I was excited. After reading.... mannn. The book is everywhere, which is okay! I did really like some of the stories, like the first chapter following Fly's dad as a teenager. However, other simply didn't add anything to the plot. I also felt like they were great stand alone stories but they really didn't influence the actual goal we were trying to achieve. When Stela and Fly do meet, the actual inception of their romance and growth as people who genuinely love each other is skipped over! I felt like there was this expectation that because we followed their childhoods and parent's love lives, their romance would just click. But it doesn't !! As characters, they really have no chemistry or commonalities, and we never get to see them actually fall in love, which again, is the thing the blurb starts with !! I think this book was marketed completely wrong: it's not a romance between Fly and Stela as much as it is a look into the way culture, gender, and location shape our lives. I think the book would have actually been better if Fly and Stela were never forced to have this love story imposed onto them. 

Other, smaller (subjective) things I didn't like: the amount of extremely graphic sex scenes that were written with the expectation to be hot / poetic (?) but were really just extremely gross to read. The
rape storyline that was put in and never actually discussed or dealt with.
The sudden shift into New York when the pandemic started. I understood what it was going for but it really came out of nowhere and didn't really add anything to the plot except the shock we all felt when the pandemic started. The absolute mess of a plotline that follows a sexy, risque, lying, artist of a bisexual woman who destroys a relationship that is completely founded on stereotypes. 
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