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A review by savbad
Mad Honey by Jennifer Finney Boylan, Jodi Picoult
3.0
From a cis trans ally view, this book handles transness (mtf) well and there are multiple trans women. None feel one dimensional. Of course, I would defer to a trans woman before taking my recommendation. I read this book in one day, so I'd definitely recommend as it sucked me in, but my main hang up is Olivia.
She feels flat; she is a mother, she is a worried mother, she is a mother worried about her son who possibly murdered his girlfriend, she is a mother grappling with her own history of abuse. My description of her gives too much complexity as most of the novel is her fretting over her son. Oh, and her info dumping about bees.
The real star of the novel is Lily. At first I found her to be too much of a John Green wet fantasy: melodramatic with a vague dark past and quirky traits. And then we find out she's trans, what she went through, and why she is the way she is. She can be quirky all she wants; she fucking deserves it. By the end of the novel, I grieved for her death. I wanted her to go to Oberlin and live her best truth.
Outside of Olivia, my other complaint was the murderer. In my opinion, the novel could have ended several chapters prior to the ending and the murderer was a huge cliche, and, if I'm being honest, for a book about women, really reductive. Would it not have been better not to answer the murder out right? Wasn't most of the novel about proving that Asher didn't kill the book, not about who did? Have a definite answer, allude to it, and then stop writing.
ALSO: the jacket copy says something about Asher and Lily having a grand romance. Y'all, they were teenagers who knew each other for three or four months. Take all of their declarations with a grain of salt. It's just a little more romantic than Romeo and Juliet.
She feels flat; she is a mother, she is a worried mother, she is a mother worried about her son who possibly murdered his girlfriend, she is a mother grappling with her own history of abuse. My description of her gives too much complexity as most of the novel is her fretting over her son. Oh, and her info dumping about bees.
The real star of the novel is Lily. At first I found her to be too much of a John Green wet fantasy: melodramatic with a vague dark past and quirky traits. And then we find out she's trans, what she went through, and why she is the way she is. She can be quirky all she wants; she fucking deserves it. By the end of the novel, I grieved for her death. I wanted her to go to Oberlin and live her best truth.
Outside of Olivia, my other complaint was the murderer. In my opinion, the novel could have ended several chapters prior to the ending and the murderer was a huge cliche, and, if I'm being honest, for a book about women, really reductive. Would it not have been better not to answer the murder out right? Wasn't most of the novel about proving that Asher didn't kill the book, not about who did? Have a definite answer, allude to it, and then stop writing.
ALSO: the jacket copy says something about Asher and Lily having a grand romance. Y'all, they were teenagers who knew each other for three or four months. Take all of their declarations with a grain of salt. It's just a little more romantic than Romeo and Juliet.