Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

With A Vengeance by Freydís Moon

1 review

lasafica_reads's review

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dark medium-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No

2.0

*UPDATE 05/01/2024: Just found out that this author is in fact not Latine in any way whatsoever and has been pretending to not just be Latine but also a POC Latine which is very sickening.
Now in regards to my original review of this book i think that this explains the offness i felt when reading this. Im glad i followed my gut and never read anything else from this author. The harm that this has caused is maddening.**


This book rubbed me the wrong way and i cant quite put my finger on why but ill try.
Before i start I want to say there will be some spoilers and also that this review is coming from my experience as a Queer Latine who is a child of a immigrants. Also, also, also forgive my sentence structure i know its awful lmao. 

To start, the way the friendship with Esther was written really got under my skin. I understand the main character is supposed to be imperfect and messy and distrusting especially after what happened with their mom, however i cant get over how Kye, who is Latine & knows how awful ICE is to their community, made the choice to intimidate Esther with ICE violence. Having to read through the scene where Kye threatens to give Esthers picture to the ICE agent if Esther didnt do what Kye wanted, made my stomach twist. And then the next time they talk Kye gets what they want from Esther and proceeds to tell Esther that "if itll save my own ass" ill turn in all the undocumented workers from my moms business AND THEN proceeded to talk down to and explain to Esther how oppressive systems work as if Esther is a naive child. The thing is, i think i might be able to get past that if Kye ever appropriately apologized for it. But they didnt it was kind of like "Well you know me im kind of f*cked up. Oppsie ✌🏼😃"As if thats a good reason to not fully own up to and rectify the awful way Kye treated Esther for the majority of the book and was willing to use their own community as canon fodder, to benefit themselves. 
Personally i thought everything about the ICE/undocumented/immigrant storyline was handled so carelessly and not wrapped up with any kind of thoughtfulness. 
I think the only part of this book that felt like it was handled semi well was the gender identity however it still felt kind of removed from Kyes Latine identity. It made me sad because i only read this book because i thought i was going to get a story about the Trans Latine experience and yet the Latine experience was not done well and felt separate from the Trans identity as if their isnt an entire intersection to be explored. Its so hard to find a queer/trans book about Latine people by Latine people so when i found this i was so excited unfortunately for me this book was overall a very disappointing read, with very few redeeming qualities.



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