Review by ourxstorybegins - Love Letters From a Gangsta

ourxstorybegins 's review for:

Love Letters From a Gangsta by Shvonne Latrice

2.5

adventurous fast-paced

Long story short: this wasn't for me.

I really enjoyed the romance and was rooting for them the whole time, but there was a lot of misogyny and homophobia (with a sprinkle of transphobia???) that just made this ultimately not worth the read. More details on that in the CWs

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Infidelity, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Murder, Pregnancy, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Homophobia, Infertility, Lesbophobia

Minor: Rape, Self harm, Transphobia, Suicide attempt

Re self-harm/suicide attempt:

one of the brothers is in a relationship with a woman where it's mentioned that she's attempted suicide and there are a couple times where jokes are made that involve suggesting someone will "slit their wrists"

Re Homophobia/Lesbophobia/Transphobia: How in the hell did there manage to be transphobia in this book without any trans people existing?! So, Jessika is a lesbian and her entire character is just the predatory lesbian trope. Do people like that exist? Sure. But considering she's the only queer character in the whole book, it's not exactly the best look. Major spoilers follow:

She's "in love" (???) with this woman who's had her sights set on Lequay for years, but this woman is straight. Jessika spends this WHOLE BOOK trying to convince this girl that she doesn't need a man, to the point that she ends up being the person who set up Lequay and is the reason he ended up in jail for a while. And when he finds out, we get this absolute gem: "I didn't like to kill females, but Jessika had that shit coming. Shit, was she a fucking female anyway? I wasn't about to consider her ass one. She ate the same shit I did in the bedroom." Like...what was even the point? To question whether or not someone is a woman simply because they...are attracted to other women? Lequay's whole thing is that he "doesn't have beef" or "doesn't kill" etc etc women, but he could've simply said that hey, she was trying to ruin his life so he was going to kill her. Instead, he went this route and it was really gross.

Misogyny: Majorly from the actual bad characters (like Art) but also! before they meet each other in person, I'm not sure how many times exactly we get Lequay talking about how much he hopes Scotland's not ugly, but that number is definitely in the double digits. Literally this dude is talking about her voice getting him turned on and then he's like "HOPE SHE'S NOT AN UGGO". Like looks are important I get it but damn, chill out. Good news, she's hot, so everything is fine there lmao. It was just very much giving "all of these feelings will be null & void if she's not hot" which gets into weirdness about women and worthiness etc etc.