madeline's Reviews (776)

I'm usually pretty trash for Rebecca Zanetti books -- her Sin Brothers series is one of my faves -- but this was really a disappointment.

Laurel Snow is a rising star at the FBI, a fiercely intelligent criminal profiler.  She's sent to her hometown in Washington State to help investigate a serial killer in the area, where she meets Fish & Wildlife Captain Huck Rivers.  Laurel and Huck are hunting a killer, and being hunted in return.

I think this is a really well-paced mystery, with enough red herrings to keep you guessing and a villain who's a logical surprise.  But there were too many irritating things about this book for me to actually like it.  Initially I really was enjoying the read -- Zanetti loves an enormous/broody/enormously broody hero, and wouldn't you know, I love that too.  But I'm afraid she's leaning too far into the extreme here.  Huck's name is just hot man word salad (Huck Delta Rivers?? Come on.), and we get almost no backstory on him.  This is not a romance novel, and clearly intended to be a longer series, but I could have done with a little more information on him.

Laurel is probably meant to be read as a hot lady Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds, and she starts out like this.  But she quickly devolves into kind of a Mary Sue and a flat representation of what I imagine is meant to be a woman on the autism spectrum, which is frustrating.  Huck is intrigued by her because ""she's not like other girls,"" citing at one point how he likes that she's not high maintenance.  It's 2022, can we not describe women by how much effort they put into things like their physical appearance?  We also get so many unnecessary details about her: I think her every outfit is described, and it's just not interesting.

For me, the final nail in the coffin here comes at 88%, and that's when one character calls another a f*ckt*rd.  Folks, the campaign to end the use of the word r*tard has been in full swing since I was in high school many years ago, and yes, using the end of it here still counts.  I'm reading this ARC pretty late in the game, and I really hope another reviewer flagged it and it's not in the final copy, because I cannot believe an editor let it go out as an ARC with it.  

Thank you Zebra & NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

rape, murder, gun violence, blood, gore, kidnapping, panic attacks

super interesting, particularly in the second half.  i think it could have benefitted from fewer direct quotes and more analysis.

just so lovely.

honestly, i can't believe that i'm rating a book about men realizing they were terrible to their gay sons only after said sons were murdered five stars.  but everything about this is so deft, and their growth is so real that you cannot help end up really feeling for two very flawed men who each loved their sons imperfectly.

ike's son isiah was married to buddy lee's son derek.  two months before the bulk of the book takes places, the couple was murdered outside a wine bar.  both ike and buddy lee were estranged from their sons after some time in prison and a lot of homophobia, and the funeral is tense.  but besides their criminal records and shitty outlooks on gay people, ike and buddy lee share one more thing in common - the desire to see their sons' killer brought to justice.  when the investigation stagnates, the two take matters into their own hands.

during the course of the book, ike and buddy are forced to unpack a lot of their prejudices.  ike is a Black man who has no problem calling buddy out on, like, colloquial racism, but it's tougher for him to see how his homophobia has permeated his life.  buddy works through how he stopped thinking about how hurtful the racist and homophobic jokes he tells are after he realized that if he was racist and homophobic, the grandparents he idolized were too, and how could good people like that be so bad?

i think the work the men do is really believable.  they each seemed like they were on the precipice of some begrudging acceptance (each of them talks about how they just didn't """get""" how being gay appealed to their son), and it's a shame that it's the death of their children that incites real change.  but they also acknowledge the same in this, and regret that even if their children were alive to apologize to, there's no number of "i'm sorrys" that could repair the hurt they caused.

this book is full of racism, homophobia, and blatant violence.  none of it is gratuitous, though.  every scene is purposeful and propels the story forward.  incredibly absorbing, you'll want to put it down and find you can't.

CW:

homophobia from parents, racism, racial slurs, homophobic slurs, violence, murder, gun violence, child in danger (child is fine)

every story in this collection is fantastic, exploring how it is growing up in the aftermath of a trauma you didn't experience but that informs your everyday culture.  what a loss, to have So taken from us too soon.

CW:

racism, homophobia, references to genocide, references to a school shooting

ughhhhhh i really wanted to like this one. i liked REAL MEN KNIT, also by this author, but there was so much going on here that was Not For Me.

things that just aren't my cup of tea: friends to lovers romances, particularly when they've been best friends for decades - if it was gonna happen it would have happened! romances with low stakes - there's literally nothing holding them back from getting together besides their own headassery. fiction that involves real people - i knew that i was probably going to find the fact that she's chasing after keanu reeves squicky, and i did, and there's also several other celebrity "cameos." not my thing, it's like my unease about THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS to the nth degree.

things that are just regular bad: the writing style - it's so childish, and i don't remember this being the case for the other book of hers. the editing - you're telling me you sent a book to print with multiple incomplete sentences just hanging out? true as a character - he's incredibly overbearing and jealous, and at one point is literally trying to control what she drinks. the premise - why would keanu getting married mean he'd retire?? the scene where true and lu overhear jason momoa & lisa bonet having hot springs sex - those are real people who maybe would not want to be in your book like that? the timeline - there's a scene in the first couple of chapters that takes place really weirdly (true is leaving but then maybe he doesn't or there's a flashback to a few minutes before with a conversation we didn't see or maybe it's another day, who the fuck knows) and true at one point references that bethany has spent several years very lost and has just now kind of righted herself. this is never spoken of again.

i think that some people will find this a very charming romp. i didn't, and i knew i probably wouldn't going in. but personal preferences on tropes et cetera aside, there are some really frustrating stylistic and plotting choices going on here. it's a miss for me.

CW:

off-page death of a brother/best friend in a car accident

tw: graphic descriptions of child sexual assault and child abuse, religious abuse, financial abuse, racism, fatphobia.

this book is comped with EDUCATED by Tara Westover, and there are absolutely portions that are just as difficult to read as westover's book. but the two differ in writing style -- this is where sex cult nun falls short.

i think the main issue with SCN is that it's written in present tense, mostly from the point of view of a child, and that makes it really hard to achieve any nuance. there are many totally horrifying scenes describing children being sexually assaulted, including jones herself, but because they're written through her eyes at that age, there's no real condemnation or analysis of the abuse and the way it affected her then and now. this extends to other terrible non-sexual scenes, such as ones describing the people they lived with in macau and ones describing fat bodies. the author neither endorses nor decries some really awful stuff and that's tough.

a secondary issue with the tense is that the dialogue is really stilted. there's no way jones remembers all these conversations that are described in the book, and her voice even as a child sounds like an adult's. she's reluctant to blame either of her parents for subjecting her to this unimaginable abuse and white knights for them throughout.

there's no denying that this is a powerful book -- it's certainly not shying away from presenting the abuses jones suffered as a child in this cult. but it's not thinking critically about their long-term effects, either, and that's its ultimate failing.

if you liked this book (or even didn't like it but wanted to), definitely try EDUCATED if you haven't already, or FATHERMOTHERGOD by Lucia Greenhouse.

this was the longest 200 pages of my life.

i can't decide what irritated me the most about this family, their unexamined racism and homophobia or the fact that they have a series of elaborate competitions every christmas. (kidding, i do know which one is worse.) we love to have a character outed by her mother and have a sibling make it entirely about them, don't we???? and also to have that character out another of their siblings in a smaller setting????

also, where the f*ck in arkansas do you have enough snow on christmas every single year to have a family snowball fight??

overall, a really solid collection of thoughts here -- her best pieces are (unsurprisingly, i think) the ones that are the most personal: ones where she's talking about the way she's been evaluated for her appearance since childhood, where men expect access to a woman's body long before she becomes a woman, where she realizes that to be famous for one's looks is to no longer have ownership of them. "buying myself back," which initially appeared in new york magazine and was their most-read piece that year, is probably the best in the book -- it's visceral and violating to even read, let alone experience.

there are some essays that don't work, of course, and they're ones where ratajkowski isn't pushing herself. she's clearly an intelligent, thoughtful woman, but "bc hello halle berry" is particularly rough. ratajkowski remembers a vacation she was paid to take and relates conversations with her husband where she's complaining about capitalism as she posts swimsuits to instagram so she can sell more and watching her like count tick up. she juxtaposes this against a group of women in hijabs she sees on the resort beach, and she reflects on the power a woman gains by covering or not covering her body. she's unable, or unwilling, perhaps, to admit that her privilege as a famous woman is what got her this vacation, and while she's open about money in other essays, it's grating to read about her dislike of rich people when she is one. the privilege is a double-edged sword, i suppose, in that she's achieved fame by profiting off the way men look at her, simultaneously taking back power and losing it.

this book isn't groundbreaking, it's not going to reframe how we think about power or beautiful women or privilege or feminism. but it is for the most part well written, deeply personal, and moving. a good read.

very cute!  too much food for me, but that's the name of the game here so it's a me not you problem.