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skippy-reads · 7 months ago

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•Reading Wrapped 2024•

Books read: 65

Below the cut will be my top 5 Best, Worst and Most Boring Reads!! Enjoy :)

Best:

Exquisite Corpse • William Joseph Martin

I was initially hesitant to read this, because I had a few hangups on the premise. I support queer people making art of their experiences in whatever way they decide it needs to be made, and I'm a sucker for splatterpunk. I fucking LOVE this book. I can't really articulate why I love it so much, sometimes it's borderline campy with it's gore and shock value, and sometimes it really punches you in the gut and makes you have sympathy for absolute monsters like Andrew and Jay. I adored every page of this, and can't say much more about it. I also can't stress enough, READ THE TRIGGERS, my dm's are open or you can find them online, and THEN read it. Unless you know you have a high threshold, I would discourage going into this blind. I'm not your mom though, if you want a campy, nasty gorefest, this is a GREAT book.

I've Been Thinking of Ending Things • Ian Ried

This was put on my list by a YouTuber I watch consistently. Someone had asked his favorite thing on Netflix, and he said this movie, though he liked the book better. After consuming both, I have to agree! The book is a lot sneakier, the sense of dread and confusion hit me harder in the mystery department, whereas the movie just feels chaotic and more on the Thriller genre. Maybe theyre meant to be taken in together and not independently, but having read the book THEN watching the movie, I thoroughly enjoyed both, but the book is just. Better. I can't talk much about the plot because it's just that kind of story, but the audiobook was so good!!!

Migrations • Courtney McConaghy

Judging by the reviews, this book is very polarizing. It seems that you either love it or hate it, and that all hinges on if you like the protag and relate to/sympathize with her. I love Franny and subsequently loved her story here. Migrations is about a woman finding her will to live again after a life of mental illness and trauma over the backdrop of a suicide mission to Antarctica for some birds. Franny is a complicated woman who makes reckless decisions but her internal dialogue reveals a bleeding heart that just WANTS LOVE AND AHH. A lot of the 1-star reviews for this book were about the lack of 'scientific realism' and to that I say, "go read a non-fiction then." Migrations is about characters and relationships and experiences, it tells you exactly the right amount of information without overloading you with details. The prose especially was so SO good; despite a book set primarily on frozen oceans or otherwise cold climates, I always felt warmed by the simple way the story is told.

Dykette • Jenny Fran David

I am at the perfect time in my life to read this. This was EVERYTHING I wanted the Ashley Herring Blake books to be, Blake WISHES she wrote this. She wishes she could capture true sapphic connection, deconstruct gender and sexuality in the unique way that lesbians do it, giving femmes the spotlight they deserve, she WISHES. Dykette has particularly interesting things to say about femme lesbians and their place in the lesbian ecosystem. It's funny, it's sexy, it's modern and contemporary, it makes actual efforts into representation of different kinds of lesbians. This is the first book I've ever read that has a he/him lesbian *as a main character* as well as a black they/them lesbian!! All contained in a quirky slice-of-life, set over the course of a Christmas getaway with an older butch/femme couple. I legitimately believe that every sapphic owes it to themselves to read this if you want a fun time.

The Honeys • Ryan La Sala

You all here already know how much and why I love this book! Check out the review I wrote for it in my other posts!

Worst:

Actually only 4 this year!! Teehee

The Last House on Needless Street • Catriona Ward

Dumb. Dumb book. I had issues with it from the very beginning, because spoiler, this book does a complete 180 at about the halfway point. It *starts* with a serial killer who's kidnapped a girl, and has a cat, with a side story about the little girl's sister hunting her down, taking justice into her own hands and riding into the sunset with her in tow. Lauren/Lulu is our girl in question, and the extent of her injuries and scars are described in shocking, grotusque detail. It's really the only horror in the whole book if you don't count "mental illness scary" as horror. It's revealed that the cat, Olivia, is an alter in Lauren's head, that Lauren has DID and uses Oliva to cope with the abuse. It's revealed even later that Lauren AND Olivia are alter's in THE KILLER'S head, Ted, and HE has DID as a result of his mother's extreme abuse. Why does Lauren look like a melted candle with no function in her legs?? You'd have to ask Ted and the stupid British woman that decided to write this. I wish I could get into everything I hate about this book, but at that point, it would just go on skippy-reads. The only enjoyment I really got from this was any chapter narrated by Olivia, just because I like her and the interjection of gay christian cat antics.

The Patient • Jasper Dewitt

I wish I could go back to whatever video or forum post or even human person who recommended this to me and personally UN recommend it. I'm already tired of the 'reddit story turned book' genre, if you can call it that (yes, I've read Penpal. No, it did not impress or even entertain me) but The Patient pairs that genre/trope with an utter disgusting amount of ableism towards mentally ill people. I wanted to stop reading at every moment, every time a new chapter started, I had to convince myself to keep going and finish it, only through pure stubbornness did I manage. Nothing anyone does at any point makes any fucking sense, nobody makes the decisions that a normal rational person would do, and the ENDING ugh GOD. Knowing what the story is, what it's about, how it ends, I can confidently say that The Patient was a waste of my fucking time. I can only recommend this book if you have ~4 hours to kill and literally nothing else in the world to do. Even still, I may choose to stare blankly at a wall than pick this up again.

Piercing • Ryu Murakami

There's a chance that my opinion of it is skewed bc this was my only form of entertainment while getting my entire chest stabbed continuously for 3 hours, but this was such an annoying story. Unnecessarily grotesque and near constant depictions of child abuse, both physical and sexual, thats being shoved right into your eyeballs while Things Kind Of Happen around two extremely mentally unwell characters. And, no, the mentally ill people are not treated as people, surprising I know. The actual story taking place is interuppted by far too many flashbacks, all of which are the child abuse I just mentioned. Chiaki and Kawashima both take great care to remind us of how unstable they are, how terrible their childhoods were and the horrible things they want to do to each other, that's it, that's the book. Yes, the whole thing, it doesn't even have a proper ending or resolution, the PURPOSE of Kawashima's actions and the story as we know it doesn't even get resolved. It just ends. There were things I liked about it, it kept my attention (a feat in and of itself for an ADHD+dyslexic reader) and I did feel the dread and fear when I was supposed to, but the book as a whole was just not very well executed.

Iris Kelly Doesn't Date • Ashley Herring Blake

Check out my review of this one on this blog! It sucked oh it sucked so bad!

Most Boring

Joyland • Steven King

I'm sometimes tempted to put this in my Bad category, but there were significant parts that I did enjoy. This story can't seem to decide which is more important, the horror aspect or the slice of life. We slip and slide around between the two, so the pacing sort of goes from "dumb teenager going through dumb teenager things while working at an amusement park but it's the 70's so I guess it's cool automatically" to "boring murder mystery with a blink and it's over resolution." I liked the mother character and her son, weird that he's randomly psychic but it IS Steven King, so I'm not that surprised, and a disability rep that I didn't find horribly offensive, but my opinion on that front doesn't really mean all that much, so take that as you will! Overall, bland but palatable. I liked Misery better.

You've Lost a Lot of Blood • Eric LaRocca

I liked LaRocca's other book, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, my only actual complaint is that the characters are a little cartoon-y and it's too short, but this one? Oh my God. Not a single character feels like a human being. It sort of benefits being Half Fake, in that the story itself is a book written by our MC, and that story is boring and I didn't care for it. The book in the world I live in written by Eric LaRocca, is kind of funny in some aspects. The main character feels like if James Somerton wrote a book and then someone else wrote a book about that. A highlight was the protag in the MC's fake story, the older sister character, and her arc with her little brother. It had set up, climbing action, and pay off, but we're intentionally left without a satisfying resolution, which was kind of fun. LaRocca could've done better with the rest of the book, though.

Haunted • Chuck Palahniuk

I knew what this was going into it, and it makes sure anyone else would too, upon the second chapter, Guts. I love this genre, but there's nothing that kills me more than when an author just doesn't know what they're doing. This particular work by Palahniuk and also the works of Aron Beauregard are my examples of how NOT to do splatterpunk, just collections of short stories that check off all the grossest and most disturbing things while neglecting to tell an actually compelling story. By the end of Haunted, I was reading the goriest stories I'd ever laid eyes on, and begging for it to just end before I died of boredom. Also, I hate when stories have SA just for shock value, especially the likes of which are present here.

First to Die at the End • Adam Silvera

Where do I even begin. What a boring, tepid, unremarkable, sometimes actively infuriating read. The audiobook made it so much worse, both actors for Valentino and Orion sounded like auditory cardboard, and sometimes the writing is so bad, so cliche I feel like I'm owed one smack on Adam Silvera's head. It would be a hilarious hate-read if I didn't love the first book and its characters so much. I literally don't even remember how it ends specifically, because I just can't get the part where Valentino died at exactly 9:11pm out of my fucking HEAD. Orion's haunted by the events of Sept. 11 (yes, really) because his parents were lost in the trajedy. It's his only personality trait besides his heart condition and that he writes as a hobby. The specificity of such a prominent character trait made me wonder if Silvera had such trauma. I had to investigate, but no, he didn't. He was just in New York when 9/11 happened and was troubled by the what-if's. How tragic, I won't be reading anything by him again unless the madness (morbid curiosity) takes me again.

Into the Drowning Deep • Mira Grant

Seventeen Hours. 448 pages. 38 chapters. This book dragged and slogged like nothing else I've read thus far. Usually I'm fully onboard with mermaids, if a book has mermaids, I'm there. Most of the first half is establishing the many side characters that are going to die in stupid ways anyway, and precisely none of them are interesting enough to carry even a single page. The biology jargon just slides off my brain, the final twist was so incredibly stupid, it felt like Grant just woke up in the middle of the night and wrote it down without thinking of how to fit it into the story at all. I was entertained by the poaching couple because they were hilarious. They'd be much funnier if Grant didn't feel the need to remind us every single time who they are and what their motivations are, and if the person who read this to me didn't put on such a terrible Australian accent. I had some issues with the disability rep here that I'm not gonna get into bc it's not really my place, but I wish Grant could've been more creative with naming the three sister characters. Hally, Holly and Heather? Really? I couldn't keep these names straight to save the life of me.

Honorable Mentions

My Husband • Maud Ventura

Weyward • Emilia Hart

Waif • Samantha Kolesnik

I'll See You Again • Jackie Hance

Pitbull: The Battle over an American Icon • Bronwen Dickey

Black Water Sister • Zen Cho

Your Emergency Contact is having an Emergency • Chen Chen

Raptor Red • Robert T Bakker

The Only Good Indians • Stephen Graham Jones

#reading wrapped #books i read in 2024 #bookblr #booktok

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skippy-reads · 9 months ago

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Episode #2:

The Honeys • Ryan La Sala

Final Rating: 8.5/10

This is NOT a spoiler free review!

Disclaimer: Citations will be blurry, but im trying to be steadier handed when taking these. Tangents, if theyre here, will be in pink.

Woof, this summer has been rough for me. I'm so glad that this book managed to find me on this particular summer. It was a welcome breath of fresh air and humor, compelling story and excellent prose. The only reason this isn't a 10/10 is beause I'm just not all that fond of books for teens or stories where theyre the main characters, BUT I gave it an extra half point for being so darn good in spite of it.

So lets get into what made me give this my highest rating so far!

Our story hits the ground running, as chapter one begins with our main character, Mars, being attacked by his twin sister, Caroline, who tries to kill him in his sleep with various stuff around his room. Wow, what a way to start! Caroline ultimately dies in Mars' fight for his life, being crushed underneath him as they both fall from the second story indoor staircase of their big ass manor.

From there, we piece together who Caroline is over the course of her funeral, and learn more about Mars' parents, his upbringing, and his relationship with his sister.

Carolines funeral is attended by a strange group of girls that Mars immediately recongnizes as The Honeys, a group of all girls who attend an upper class summer camp every year called Apsen. Caroline was grouped with these girls and attended Aspen yearly, though later we learn that she attended in the winter too. Mars doesn't attend Aspen, and the story about why is drip fed to you over the course of the book at an excellent pace. Each time I learned a new detail, it slapped me across the face and genuinely turned the previous plot points on their heads from the added context.

At Caroline's funeral, he's forced to lie about her own injuries to save face for his politician mother, as well as the circumstances regarding their twin's death. Mars knows that it wasn't brain cancer, but what else could it be? When Mars meets again with the Honeys at the funeral, strange things quickly start to happen around them. He resolves that to find out what happened to his sister, he'll need to go back to Aspen, and so our plot begins!

Marshall Matthias III

No story is truly good without a good protagonist, and Mars is GREAT. I don't even know where to begin, really.

They're genderfluid, gay, into math and numbers, pragmatic, and driven. When we first meet Mars, it's immdiately after a massively traumatic event, the loss of a treasured sister, and she's understandably not at her highest point. Most of what we learn about Mars' character is through dialouge, how she talks to people and navigates situations.

I wish i grabbed pictures of my top ten funniest Mars moments. He is HILARIOUS, extremely quick witted, sometimes a little awkward, but confident. The book is generally very entertaining, but Mars brings something really specific to the table in the way she interacts with the other teenagers shes forced to live with. I like that shes a fighter, isn't above throwing punches if punches are due. I like that when she knows she's right, she stands the fuck up and talks. Near the end point of the book, it's not about exposing Aspen's corruption, greed, and transphobia, it's about being left alone so she can figure out what the fuck happened to her sister. Sure, once the seedy underbelly of the hive is discovered, his priorities shift, but by that point, the story has fallen into such chaos that it's not really up to her what's important anymore.

The Honeys

Technically, theyre our antagonists at the beginning and for most of the book. Sure, Mars really likes them, but he only really admires them because they represent something he isn't (a pretty girl. There's a reason im going to be favoring she/her pronouns for Mars).

Maybe it's just because I'm jaded like that, but I'm not so easily offput by girls being girls, even if they're weird. The book really wants you to think they're creepy though. After we know what they look like, sort of, and can assume they wear the fem equalvilant of Mars' camp outfit, the only thing left to describe is the eery way the girls interact with each other.

They travel in packs, either holding hands or linked by the pinkies. Once, during a campfire gathering with everyone, Mars describes them as difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins, as their legs are crossed over each other in a line.

The leader, Bria, was sweet to Mars at the funeral and invited him back to Aspen personally. I don't quite remember if they invite Mars to Cabin H specifically, their HQ, or if she just assumes that there's an invite to the cabin, but she goes either way and is welcomed with open arms. As soon as they recongnize Mars, all the girls treat her like she's one of the girls. They're the nicest and most accepting of Mars' gender that we've seen, maybe even in Mars' whole life.

I was struggling to feel any sort of negative emotion towards them at all! They're being nice to Mars! She gets support, someone to listen to her. A big point at the beginning with the funeral was the utter lack of actual warmth in the Matthias household. With parents who view children as extensions of themselves, representatives of their skills as parents and leaders. Her parents werent UNsupportive, per se, but they definitely resented her for 'choosing' to be trans+gay rather than behave like a good man should.

As a result, Caroline was the unwilling golden child. Her and Mars strayed apart, Caroline sought refuge in Aspen and the Honeys while Mars found comfort in the solitude.

The Trans Rep

It's excellent. You may have already seen from the above citations what I'm about to say, but either way, I'm talking about it.

Mars being genderfluid would be one thing, but she's not just generfluid, she's transfemme. I think, too often, we have trans/nonbinary representation that plays it too safe. Nonbinary characters are robots, aliens, characters who "dont care" about gender, "don't care" about how you refer to them. Mars herself even calls herself fluid, and says her pronouns are 'any' at two points in the book.

But the above screenshots provide more than enough contrary evidence that Mars not only experiences dysphoria but has a really specific idea of her gender presentation. She didn't want to shave her head, she did it as a sacrifice, to prove to her parents that she didn't care about discarding feminity.

She's never happy to be associated with masculinity, but RELISHES any oppurunity to express feminity. She layers on lipgloss as a point of defiance when she beats all the boys at fencing, further has to stand her ground when said boys prove to be sore losers and try to make it her problem.

The transphobia is perfect, what a weird sentence to type but what I mean is that I believe that Mars is visibly transgender, and that the we're seeing an accurate represenation of how the world reacts to her. She has to litereally fight to have bare minimum respect as a person. I was on the edge of my seat during those chapters, and could feel the ostrisization Mars was experiencing. I felt the same frustration as Wyatt and other camp staff tell her that she "just needs to give the 'other' guys" a chance, even though THEY are the ones not making space for HER.

Halfway through the book, I just wanted Mars to blackmail the camp organizer into letting her stay with the Honeys, and we actually get that!

Final Thoughts

Overall, The Honey's is an impeccably written horror. The prose slaps, the plot slaps, the protagonist slaps, the ending is amazing, exactly what I wanted from it. I strongly recommend this book to anyone wanting a good suspenseful horror novel with good trans representation!

#skippy reads #queer books #transgender books #booktok #bookblr #the honeys by ryan la sala #ryan la sala

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skippy-reads · 9 months ago

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Skippy Watches • 001

Orange is the New Black

Spoilers for the end of episode 7 season 3

When Norma kills her 'false prophet,' she takes life into her own hands, rises past the meek servitude that Guru Mack accuses her of and does an action all her own. Without realizing it, the very act that's locked her in prison has set her free.

She rises above Red's own domineering persona when it's revealed that she has a whole free afternoon to herself. She floats away on a cloud, reminded that she has people waiting for her.

Again, without realizing it, she starts her own cult by revealing her magic to her followers, but the "magic" is her calm and gentle presence. Red tells this to us when she says, "is this your magic?" after Red vented about losing her power in the kitchen.

Norma "blesses her followers" by giving them touches of all varieties. A touch to the forehead of one follower, a gentle cradling of Gina's jaw. These touches are only magical because Norma is the one who does them, and Norma possesses a gentle, soft, affectionate presence. She boops Leanne on the forehead, a silly and playful gesture to illustrate that, yes, even this touch is holy because it is done by Norma.

#orange is the new black #oitnb #micro essay #skippy watches

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skippy-reads · 1 year ago

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Episode #1:

Iris Kelly Doesn't Date • Ashley Herring Blake

(and by default, its predecessors)

⚠️This book is +18⚠️ Final Rating: 3/10

Disclaimer: Citations will be blurry and crooked, I read a vast majority of this at work with a flimsy paperback library book and sent these to my friends before turning it in and THEN decided i wanted to write a review. Tangents will be in pink

I understand it might be strange to start a book review blog with the finale of a three book series, but rest assured, I read the other two last year and found them to be mostly mid. Boring characters, boring plot, likes to play Queer Utopia dressup games.

One Book: Three Titles

Blake has this...affinity for this specific dynamic of relationship. I'm going to avoid speculating on why, as it's first and foremost not my business and second, not relevant. She is openly bisexual, white and (as far as I know) cisgender.

Each Bright Falls installment features the exact same couple; one lesbian, white, late 20's to early 30's, as gender nonconforming as women's clothing section during pride month or Woxer ad, skinny. She's paired with a bisexual woman, also white, also skinny, also cisgender, high femme and the same age as the lesbian, if not older by a few years, as is the case with IKDD. (I don't remember details like this from DGDC and APDF)

The only slightly notable exception to this would be Jordan Everwood, Astrid's girlfriend from the second book, who the group refers to as "soft butch" at the beginning, as if a short hair style and a buttonup makes someone butch. As if Blake knows anything about the butch experience.

I wouldn't go as far as to say she has no true nonbinary friends, but I highly doubt they've had conversations about what it's like to be trans, what dysphoria feels like, what being trans feels like every single day, and if they have, Blake doesn't care enough about them to make an effort to include them in her stories.

The other exception to this would be Jordan's love interest, and the titular character Astrid Parker. I'm of the opinion that Blake doesn't know her own characters well enough. Astrid Parker is a lesbian, and the book would have been better if this were the case, canonically. I could go on, and I might, but long story short, Astrid experiences comphet at multiple times throughout her life that are textbook lesbian.

She says herself that she never actually liked any of the men she dated and only dated them in the first place for her mother's approval, and has only ever felt romantic love for Jordan, another woman. When she's desperate for advice about her sexuality, she doesn't turn to her best friends of twenty years, two bisexual women, she runs to her estranged step sister, Delilah. They've only recently mended their bond as of a year ago, but what I picked up on is that Delilah is a lesbian, the only lesbian in their group. Astrid is asking for sexuality advice from a lesbian, and doesn't walk away even considering she might be one as well.

Astrid never even calls herself bisexual at any point in any of the books, our only confirmation for this being Blake's twitter with illustration and pride flags. Having a femme lesbian and a double lesbian couple would add a CRUMB of diversity to your main cast of the same cisgender sapphics and would prove that Blake is capable of writing any other kind of sapphic relationship, but alas. This post is not about Astrid.

It's about Iris

I'm gonna be honest; I knew I wasnt going to like this book when I started it. Iris is my least favorite from the Bright Falls friend group, and I dreaded every time her name was mentioned in a chapter. She is loud, vulgar, annoying, and I struggle to think of any reason why her friends keep her around.

That's not to say I kept this opinion by the end of the book. I actually grew to like her more. Surprising, I know! I like that she reads, I like that she draws. I do not believe that her character is a writer, as she is wholly incapable of writing her own novel, just copy and pastes what she and Stevie do and publishes it to a roaring success. Steven King would be proud, Blake. And for her debut novel, of all things! She didn't have a single word written before she met Stevie, and I believe owes Stevie ownership of the IP and a cut of the profits.

So who is Stevie?

Aside from the love interest in a Bright Falls romance, Stevie is no one.

Alright, let's try and be fair. Stevie is an awkward lesbian in her late twenties that struggles to not be defined by her anxiety. However, Blake has done the exact opposite to her character.

Her story begins with her six months after a six YEAR relationship ended after a steady decline of about a year, and is so horny and touch starved that she's "accidentally" nuzzling her ex's neck and sniffing her hair.

We're told she's a "very good" actor by Juilliard graduates and her professors, that her only escape from her debilitating (medicated) anxiety is on stage.

Stevie isn't allowed to be anything other than anxious, blushing, awkward. She has panic attacks in place of character development, fights with her friends who believe she isn't capable of making decisions for herself. Every mistake/decision she makes is excused, explained or justified by her anxiety. When Ren, her best friend, asks why she likes Iris, one of Stevie's first answers is that she "helps work through" her anxiety, who isn't a professional by the way, and anyway Stevie is supposed to be medicated. What are her pills doing if she still has panic attacks this frequently? Why is she not scheduling appointments to get on a different medicine that actually works for her?

This anxiety disappears after her and Iris "work through" her issues, and also disappears after she and Iris have a good fuck.

Telling Instead of Showing

The most emblematic issues I have with IKDD, from a writing stand point, is what Blake chooses to prioritize.

We don't get to see any of these dates. We don't get to see these characters that have spent the entire book falling in love FALL IN LOVE. This is chapter 28, and it begins with a highlight reel of all the amazingly romantic places that Stevie is taking Iris, and we get to see one single sentence of it. There are references to these dates in later parts of the book, but there isn't anymore detail given beyond what you're seeing now.

We're told that this is an argument, that Stevie has never seen these two "bicker" like this, when this exchange reads like a complete regular misunderstanding. Even something as simple as Adri snapped before Van could finish her sentence. or Van asked, genuine confusion coloring her facial features. could have indicated that there is any other emotion other than a hint of misunderstanding. But no, Iris interrupts and the conversation is over.

Again, why don't we see this conversation?? What would you rather be writing in your romance novel other than your leads falling more and more in love?? I understand we can't see every 'walk along the beach' conversation, but why even mention? And then we continue to another dialogue exchange anyway!

Is it because Blake would rather be writing smut scenes??

No, she doesn't seem to really wanna write those either.

So What Else is in the Book?

Our story begins with a chaotic family reunion with the Kelly family, where we're treated to information dump as each and every single one of her siblings, their spouses and their children are named, described and given dialogue within the first two pages. I don't remember a single name of any of them, and they only showed up again near the very, VERY end. Blake does this twice.

At least the theater group comes back two or three times, even if they only get one line a piece between them, IF THAT. This screenshot also leads me to my second biggest issue:

Blake doesn't want to write people of color

Notice how each new character introduced is described with race first, even the white character. This is actually unique to this section, as you typically know a character is white by the lack of mention of race, as opposed to the inclusion. Characters of color are always always described as their race first and foremost, and very rarely receive any other descriptors aside from it. A black man with a septum ring, a black man with glasses, a brown skinned person with--etc. With the lack of diversity in her main cast and this, frankly, infuriating attempt at having a diverse BACKGROUND cast, I've come to the conclusion that Blake is terrified of writing outside her comfort zone and just so happened to find an audience that doesn't give a fuck.

A lot of white people, myself included, are afraid of 'messing up' when writing a non-white character, but this excuse ceases to be valid after you've written three adult romance books, and multiple YA's. At what point are you ready to challenge not only yourself as a writer, but your biases as a white person? As an ally? This isn't at all helped by Blake's usage of words such as "mop" to refer to a POC's hair, or "creamy" when referring to her white character's skin (multiple times!).

I would not recommend this book to any self respecting person of color. You deserve a book that sees you, or is made for you or at least respects you enough to TRY, and learn from mistakes rather than not even bothering in the first place.

Blake doesn't know how to write LGBT+ people either, which is baffling to me. The story is ABOUT Iris Kelly not wanting to form romantic relationships, it's the title of the fucking book. Aromantic people aren't even mentioned until about the halfway point (i wish i would've grabbed a picture) and Iris explicitly tells Stevie that she is NOT aromantic, that she knows she isn't, and that aro people don't need to have their identities shit on, but I have to ask, what is this then?:

Iris has had this spiral, like, six or so times over the course of the book. She gets in regular fights with her friends about how she doesn't need anyone, and her relationship with her mother is strained at the moment because she keeps insisting that Iris hurry up and settle down. Her friends give her the same business, and Iris has the same freak out. The character arc of Iris Kelly is that she loudly, proudly, refuses to form romantic relationships, but says in plain english that it has nothing to do with people on the A-spec.

This book could have been wonderful if it took this premise seriously. Imagine an ending where Iris Kelly DOESNT Date, actually doesn't date. She does the fake dating thing with Stevie, and it re-solidifies her new aro identity. Stevie understands, doesn't catch feelings and they become friends, good friends, hell BEST friends. It might come across that Blake cares about her own community, cares about showing real love and making real strides towards representation, but instead, she looked the aromantic community right in the face and told them "This story is not about or even for you."

It's alright though! Because trans people get the same fuck you! Half of the book's settings and conflict are about a local theater production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, where the director has taken liberties with the cast and made every character queer. Blake thinks this makes her God's gift to the community, and sucks herself off every time the play gets mentioned.

Adri, the director, is given heaps of praise from our main characters about how "powerful" this is, how "beautiful" this representation is, and how much we really needed it. Maybe I'm the Scrooge McDuck of queer books, but does this seriously impress people? Is anyone over the age of 22 feeling seen and touched by this? Because all I taste is cardboard and empty promises. If you need to tell us over and over again how good the representation is in your text, maybe you should have taken an extra few months to come up with another draft. Maybe you should roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty with actual representation.

Ashley Herring Blake is not God's gift to the sapphic romance section. She's an amateur author who writes the same book over and over again and is lavished with blowjobs from the majority for it.

#iris kelly doesn’t date #booktok #bookstagram #bookblr #sapphic romance #queer romance #lesbian #bisexual #skippy reads

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