Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

The Girl I Used to Be by April Henry

2 reviews

laurenevlyn's review

dark mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gun violence, Mental illness, Death, Kidnapping, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, and Death of parent

Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Toxic relationship, Eating disorder, Animal death, Domestic abuse, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Drug use, and Grief

moon's review against another edition

mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

my god was this book a mess. went into this expecting a fun ride because of the relatively good reviews, but i was just met with disappointment and frustration.

first off, the racism. on top of literally only having one person of color mentioned in the entirety of this book, the author had to sprinkle in some racist microaggressions as well. let's start with how the one character of color, an asian man, was introduced and described:

The other man looks Asian, or maybe only half, with dark, straight hair and eyes that turn up at the corners. His charcoal suit, cut close to his slender body, boasts a gray silk pocket square. He doesn't look like he belongs in Medford, or even in Portland, but instead in Los Angeles—or maybe Tokyo.

and then there's the fact that the main character, ariel, lied about being native american just to get herself out of a sticky situation:

Just as I'm starting to panic, the answer comes to me like a gift. "Was she part Native American? Because I am." I have no idea if that's true. I change the subject both to distract Sam and to ask what I really want to know.

take note that ariel is a white girl who is described to have had blond hair as a kid that gradually grew darker over the years. not a good look!

as if all that wasn't enough, we've got ableism too. here's an excerpt about a minor character who has schizophrenia (and is also described as a dirty homeless man, because of course he is):

"I hear people talking about me." The whites of his eyes are the only clean-looking part of his face. "That's why I have the earplugs. So I can sleep at night. But the voices sneak in anyway."
He's clearly off. Mentally ill? Asperger's? On drugs?

if you could only see my face right now. the main character (and author, by proxy) doesn't even know the difference between a psychotic episode and autism? christ. asperger's syndrome—now called autism spectrum disorder, by the way—couldn't be more different from psychosis. i guess she never expected that an autistic person would be reading this book, because this is just embarrassing, honestly. to add to this, at one point, it was hinted that he might be the actual killer because "the only kind of person who would stab Naomi so many times is a crazy person." that's an actual sentence from the book, not my words.

there are all these glaring problems and i haven't even touched on the main plot and writing. i could predict the plot twist from miles away and the big reveal of the true killer was so anti-climactic. also, the romance felt super rushed and forced. from my perspective, it felt like it was there just for the sake of having some romance. ariel and the love interest, duncan, had so little interactions and i was confused at why she fell for him when ariel barely knew anything about duncan at that point in time.

also, this is a little nitpicky, but when the killer was chasing and trying to kill ariel, one of his eyes got burnt and injured badly. but even with just one working eye, he didn't seem to have any trouble aiming and shooting a gun and that made me raise an eyebrow. you need binocular vision for stereopsis so if you just have one functioning eye, you basically lack depth perception. obviously this should have negatively impacted his coordination pretty significantly—especially if one was used to having binocular vision—but i guess this guy's just built different lmao.

basically, not a lot of the plot made sense or seemed believable to me. yeah, it's fiction, but there has to be some realistic element too, right? in conclusion: don't take this book seriously going in or you will not have a fun time.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Gun violence, Murder, Police brutality, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Violence

Moderate: Animal death, Domestic abuse, and Racism

Minor: Drug abuse