The Pornification of America is a provocative yet thought provoking journey about how ‘Raunch Culture’, a term coined by the author, has impacted our everyday lives. This oversexualization in media, the violence against women, how sexual assault gets silenced in politics, this author explores our obsession with sex and how raunch culture is becoming more wide spread.

I thought this book had really great points, a lot of the ideas presented vibed with me and my values. I could understand why raunch culture is toxic and why it needs to be spoken about more. The author brought up a really good point about being a sex positive feminist but still being outspoken about raunch culture and it made me really think about how raunch culture has affected my life.

My downfalls with this book is that it was not very well organized nor was it insanely accurate considering most of the data collected is from opinion. The main ideas of the chapters were skewed over many different sections of the book and yet when past ideas were referenced they had nothing to add to the idea at hand. Also, most of this book is full of opinions from straight people, a small sliver was left to anyone who identifies with the LGBTQIA+ and it makes me wonder how this book can claim to be ‘feminist’ when you are only supporting a fraction of the people who are at disadvantage because of the patriarchy. And finally, she had to defend the term TERF (trans-exclusive radical feminist) under the guise of this slanderous term to be demeaning to the roots of radical feminism and to this I say:
The TERFs out there are falsely using the feminist movement in order to spread their transphobia and I would never consider them feminist in any circumstance, the reason the term TERF is used because it identifies these ‘false-feminist’ and how they have wrongfully used ‘radical feminism’ to spread hate. We should be focusing on how these literal trash humans have gotten away with being coined ‘radical feminist’ in the first place, not their feelings about being called TERFs.

Overall, this book had some really great ideas but the execution and word choices were subpar. I would like to see this as a revised work in the future and maybe a little more researched, (i.e how raunch culture can also affect those who identify other than straight).

I loved this so much. I love the mythology, the history, the traveling, the whole story. I loved every second of it. I knew when I started this book that it would be a long journey, and I’d have to take time to sit down and actually think about what I was reading, but it did not hinder me one bit! If you’re thinking about reading Gaimen, I would read this book. Just do it

Yes, Daddy was a gripping thriller that began with a very eerie scenario and then threw you right into a completely dark and horrendous loop. The situation the main character finds himself in is a story we all know too well, but the author has managed to give the reader a new insight into how we find ourselves as victims in abusive relationships, and how predators find our weak spots just to exploit them. This novel did a spectacular job of telling the story of a victim of abuse and how they struggled with telling their own story.

I loved the writing style in this book, it felt very real and it took on a ‘movie-like’ quality. Jonah, the main character, is relatable in more ways than you can imagine and his development felt real, Jonah wasn’t the best person and he wasn’t trying to be, he was just trying to survive. The emotional duress Jonah experienced was felt with every word of this book and the story was a never ending cycle of ‘what the hell just happened’ and ‘what the hell is going to happen’.

The ending of this book was unexpected, I will say that. There was this underlying feeling I had throughout reading it, a feeling that the ending would be semi infuriating and it absolutely was. But I guess not all stories end happily, for all parties.

Overall, this book was a really great read and I found myself enjoying the story and its characters. It never felt like a gruesome tale I was trudging through, but it was a very dark read.

Trigger warnings for : rape, sexual assault, abuse, explicit sex scenes, drug abuse.

I want to thank NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the ARC, I would also like to thank Jonathan Parks-Ramage for writing this beautiful story.