A review by opheliasviolence
Maeve Fly by CJ Leede

challenging dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Maeve works in the Happiest Place on Earth as the Ice Queen *wink wink* and she's secretly a deranged murder. Sounds fun, right? It was, for a lot of the book. I enjoyed all the Halloween stuff, the soundtrack, how weird the book was. However, some parts felt like they were trying too hard to be edgy. The constant references to wolves and monkeys got to be a bit much.
 
The last few chapters of the book were basically torture porn. Thankfully we didn't have to sit through the pipe scene (although we got a description of what she's going to do). I think the scene was too much and should have been deleted.
 
I appreciate what this book was trying to do but some of it just didn't work for me. The idea that women usually have to go through trauma to become violent and that Maeve rejects that idea was great. But it fell apart for me when she enacts sexual violence on another woman. I felt like that wasn't necessary.  The very end left me feeling kind of meh. It was hard to care about Maeve's relationship with her grandmother because we barely saw it. The actions she takes throughout the book pain her as a sociopath or psychopath. The emotional impact of the ending wasn't there for me.
 
I enjoyed some parts of this book for sure. It's gruesome and disgusting and weird. It was worth a read, just definitely check trigger warnings for this one.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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