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gaymoonreader's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
0.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Deadnaming, Eating disorder, Homophobia, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Transphobia, Forced institutionalization, and Murder
quietmarki's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
DNF at 75%
I really don't trust recommendations from tiktok/insta, and this book is a reason why you shouldn't trust them. This book is just horrible:
1. FL is transphobic and just a big no no for me
2. The storyline is awful. I really don't understand what is happening. FL shows some empathy and now everyone wants to talk with her about there situations. Also I don't get it why a 'very very' dangerous patient would fall for her. There isn't anything to like only her 'empathy'....
3. The trigger warnings list isn't complete. Add transphobia and relationship with minor also incest.... If i know this before I wouldn't read this one.
I really don't trust recommendations from tiktok/insta, and this book is a reason why you shouldn't trust them. This book is just horrible:
1. FL is transphobic and just a big no no for me
2. The storyline is awful. I really don't understand what is happening. FL shows some empathy and now everyone wants to talk with her about there situations. Also I don't get it why a 'very very' dangerous patient would fall for her. There isn't anything to like only her 'empathy'....
3. The trigger warnings list isn't complete. Add transphobia and relationship with minor also incest.... If i know this before I wouldn't read this one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Incest, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Forced institutionalization, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
delli06's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Incest, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Cultural appropriation, and Sexual harassment
larrarreadsboks's review against another edition
This was so transphobic!! Like please don't
Content Warnings
Graphic: Transphobia
vepowell's review
0.25
Spoilers and a very negative review ahead:
So... wow. The trigger warnings were nowhere near complete. The only LGBTQ+ rep was incredibly harmful. The writing was simply poor. Repeating words from sentence to sentence, world building issues, pacing issues. I honestly only read it because of the controversy- don't make the same mistake I did. Not worth the 6 hours it took to power through it.
The story arc wasn't so much an arc as a squiggly line that lost itself somewhere in the middle, and it felt like things that could have been a whole chapter were a page, like half the plot should have been held off to a second book. Also, for a "dark romance"... there's basically no romance, just some flirting mixed with poor representation of DID (by the authors admission). The final lines as some form of cliffhanger just felt like a desperate way to get the reader to read the next book.
World building wasn't really building, and the only component of the world built out was society's hatred of women and pushing them to an anorexic ideal that led to pain and death. The rest of the world? That apparently theres several continents, psychic powers that aren't psychic but are somehow just powers of observation, giant wolves and other magical type beasts... none of that was built out in any satisfactory way. It was just "look this society hates women and treats them horribly, also theres secret government organizations and stuff but let's just focus on this one asylum and the hatred of women".
So... wow. The trigger warnings were nowhere near complete. The only LGBTQ+ rep was incredibly harmful. The writing was simply poor. Repeating words from sentence to sentence, world building issues, pacing issues. I honestly only read it because of the controversy- don't make the same mistake I did. Not worth the 6 hours it took to power through it.
The story arc wasn't so much an arc as a squiggly line that lost itself somewhere in the middle, and it felt like things that could have been a whole chapter were a page, like half the plot should have been held off to a second book. Also, for a "dark romance"... there's basically no romance, just some flirting mixed with poor representation of DID (by the authors admission). The final lines as some form of cliffhanger just felt like a desperate way to get the reader to read the next book.
World building wasn't really building, and the only component of the world built out was society's hatred of women and pushing them to an anorexic ideal that led to pain and death. The rest of the world? That apparently theres several continents, psychic powers that aren't psychic but are somehow just powers of observation, giant wolves and other magical type beasts... none of that was built out in any satisfactory way. It was just "look this society hates women and treats them horribly, also theres secret government organizations and stuff but let's just focus on this one asylum and the hatred of women".
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Incest, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual assault, Suicide, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Vomit, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail
ravensandpages's review
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
0.25
I will have a very long review incoming but in the case of tl;dr, this book is bad and I implore you to not support it or read it.
The Pawn and the Puppet is a dark forbidden romance coming from a prominent BookToker that gained enough traction to, according to the author's Instagram, hit #4 on Barnes and Noble’s Top 100 Bestsellers List in all categories and #1 in Fantasy & Science Fiction when it went up for preorder nine weeks ago. It was a B&N Bestseller upon release and supposedly hit the Amazon bestseller list. (To be taken with a grain of salt, I suppose, since it was published on April 1st. Lord, how I wish this was a joke.)
So when I heard it was terrible and problematic AND discovered it was on Kindle Unlimited, I couldn't not pick it up. My friends are of the opinion that I will read anything, and I am nothing if not predictable.
I'll start with the trigger warnings. I expect dark romances to come with a lot of trigger warnings. They're dark, after all. But the list provided by the author is nowhere near sufficient. In fact, based on surrounding controversy, I've been led to believe that this has been done on purpose. Based on how much of the book is built on shock value and disgust, I'm unsurprised. Transphobia and incest are two huge trigger warnings that are left out, and I was horrified to learn that the transphobia included was INTENTIONAL, but I'll circle back on this later. If you're going to include a list of trigger warnings for your book, you cannot let it be incomplete to shock and potentially trigger your readers. They aren't even rare trigger warnings. I also believe that rape and sexual assault should be labeled differently, and also believe that child rape/sexual assault should be its own category, but even if you disagree with me on that, transphobia and incest having the place they do in this book means you cannot just 'forget' them.
But, on to the actual book. This romance follows Skylenna (I know), a 19-year-old girl reeling from the recent death of her sister who decides to fulfill her last wish and change the way patients are treated at Emerald Lake Asylum. After 80 pages of fucking around and terribly fulfilled exposition we finally meet her love interest: Patient 13, or 'Dessin,' who is supposedly the most dangerous and feared patient in the entire asylum. Dessin has DID (Disassociative Identity Disorder, called split personality disorder in the book) and checked himself in four years ago. He has been unresponsive to the torturous treatments but after he tries to break out, Skylenna is given 90 days with her kinder method to find the name of the host and give him control back. Her failure means his execution, and the growing attraction between them just raises the stakes higher.
Intriguing plot, right? Sure. I'll come right out and say I never thought a patient-caretaker asylum romance could end well, and I'm both horrified and delighted to see I've been proven wrong. This book starts off with an Author's Note about how the portrayal of DID is purposefully given to a dark, murderous character who is treated badly to reflect our society. I doubt Brandi herself has any experience with DID or the written portrayal would not be as heinously despicable as it is, but who knows. I personally don't think anyone without DID has any business writing about DID, especially if this is what they're going to do with it. Brandi is nowhere near skilled or nuance enough and instead added another entry to a long list of horrible, malicious DID representation in media.
While we're on the heavy hitters, I might as well go and discuss the transphobia. I am a trans reader, and because I suffer from a chronic case of hating myself I decided to read the book myself and see exactly how bad it was. You'd never guess, but it was to my joy (sarcasm) even worse than I feared! I'll set the stage for you so you yourself don't have to read it. Warnings for transphobia and incest.
In order to get to Patient 13, Skylenna is tasked with the other patients in the asylum to work her way to his room. One of these is Niles, a man who believes himself to be Cupid, and was arrested for kidnapping men and women and locking them in basements until they starved. Skylenna speaks with him until he finally admits the source of his belief. As a child, Niles was trafficked as a child sex worker in order to feed his family after his father abandoned them. One of his customers was Charlotte, a trans woman. She is described as strange and odd with heavy make-up and later referred to as "a woman with male parts." This child predator is revealed, as a shocking twist, to be Niles' transitioned father. Disgusted by the treatment, he decided he couldn't handle a world where that was the only love he knew and decided to become Cupid.
I was horrified enough by this and genuinely had my entire day ruined thereafter. Trans women and trans femmes already have such limited rep, and when they do, it's often horrible things like this. I was further disgusted to learn that the author said in an Instagram post that this choice was INTENTIONAL and done despite the author knowing it was wrong. She made the character purposefully ignorant on transwomen with the intention for Skylenna to "challenge" these views and grow in the future. But when your only trans representation is a predator, something dangerous, disgusting, and humane, you are not setting up any of this to be accomplished. I don't believe a cis writer has any fucking business writing an evil, monstrous trans woman, and there was absolutely no reason for this rep. Skylenna does not grow or change in her views on trans women because there are no other trans women in the book besides Charlotte to give her the opportunity for it. Charlotte's inclusion is purely for shock and disgust, clear by every single bit of writing framing the scene.
This is the only prominent bit of LGBTQ+ rep in the book, but there is a throwaway paragraph about Skylenna's sister Scarlett that describes her choosing to "mate with the same sex" because men only care about women spreading their legs. If Charlotte's depiction wasn't already giving me radfem/TERF vibes, this would have sealed the deal. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but I'm just saying. I have a special poison in my heart for the idea that women “choose” to be with other women to escape men, mostly because it still centers that attraction around men (even if it’s a rejection of them), and to top it all off after Scarlett goes off and sleeps with other women she comes home and scrubs herself raw. It might be her history of sexual abuse, or it could be homophobia, and Brandi's shitty writing means I have no idea which it is. This is yet another case of shitty rep remaining unbalanced by positive rep in the book. Maybe just don't have it at all. You in fact do not have to force yourself to grapple with the idea that trans women and sapphic women exist if all you're going to do is portray them through a lens of disgust and horror.
At least now I get to talk about the fun stuff because even beyond the problematic aspects of the book, it's just god-awful. First of all, can we PLEASE talk about the names. Skylenna? Dessin? DeiSzek? Suseas? And those are just CHARACTER names. The fact that her dark dystopia asylum story is set in a country named DEMENTIA had me rolling with laughter. The 'Survivah' faction of bureaucrats was also a Choice. I get I'm supposed to feel bad for no one but Dessin getting Skylenna's name right, but honestly, Sky or Skye would have been much better than what we ended up with. I unfortunately cannot feel any sort of heat for a man named after the French word for drawing.
The world-building and plot both fall apart under the barest hint of pressure. The plot jumps around at random and I have no idea how Dessin keeps escaping despite being the scariest patient. How he doesn't have 24/7 surveillance, especially after his escape attempt and ultimatum set forth, is beyond me. And to that point, he's not even scary! There is no sense of darkness or 'mind games' promised in the blurb. He's just evasive and annoying. The character art is beyond laughable-- how a man confined for 4 years and regularly tortured manages to have rippling pectorals and biceps for days, not to mention a wonderful tan, is again beyond me. The tone and pacing of this book are never consistent and lead to an all-around poor reading experience. How we go from an 80-page build-up to her wanting to drop her panties immediately... is, for a third time, absolutely beyond me.
The world-building itself is also just... bad. Women are held to impossible ideals in Dementia and are subjected to basically government-mandated anorexia, leaving them weak and feeble to the point where city streets have fainting couches on corners. I ignored the ridiculousness of this for my own sanity, but Brandi seems to add this dystopia element for the sole purpose of Skylenna being oppressed for having boobs, an ass, and "golden skin" (whatever that means). Her being stick thin and still having double Ds, according to the character art, was certainly a choice and just proves to me that Skylenna and Dessin are copy-pasted romance ideals set against a shocking, gory background like that's supposed to make them shine any differently from any other romance book I've ever read.
Listen. It's clear the book does not pride itself on accuracy, well-conducted research or a thought-out world, so let's hold off on that and judge it for what we are apparently all here for: a sexy, dark, forbidden romance. I saw this was promoted by the author using the forced proximity trope but she could have just dropped proximity from that entirely. This romance was drier than a desert in August. I felt no build-up, probably because there wasn't any, and I put myself through 351 pages of drivel for not a single spicy scene, which at this point is another problematic aspect that targeted me personally. Dessin is little more than a bottom of the barrel, bargain bin Rhysand and taking one look at Brandi's Instagram and Tiktok is enough to prove the connection. We even get the added bonus of his tragic backstory revolving around atrocities committed against his mother and his sibling, like that's what we really needed in 2022.
In conclusion, The Pawn and the Puppet reads like a Wattpad draft that I cannot believe was published in this day and age. I'm unsurprised to learn that Brandi ignored beta readers with relevant degrees in the elements she chose to portray in her work in favor of the ones who were patting her on the back, which I can understand. It can be a little tough to hear that your self-insert OC x Rhysand fanfiction isn't quite up to par, but it's the truth. Even beyond the mind-bogglingly problematic aspects and the "dark" elements that have completely crossed the line in this book, there is none of the dark allure that will keep a reader wanting to turn the page. In the end, I wanted to commit myself for the emotional spiral this book send me on.
I'd recommend you don't pick up or promote this book for your trans friends, but if you don't have any, do it for yourself. Your sanity is worth more than this.
The Pawn and the Puppet is a dark forbidden romance coming from a prominent BookToker that gained enough traction to, according to the author's Instagram, hit #4 on Barnes and Noble’s Top 100 Bestsellers List in all categories and #1 in Fantasy & Science Fiction when it went up for preorder nine weeks ago. It was a B&N Bestseller upon release and supposedly hit the Amazon bestseller list. (To be taken with a grain of salt, I suppose, since it was published on April 1st. Lord, how I wish this was a joke.)
So when I heard it was terrible and problematic AND discovered it was on Kindle Unlimited, I couldn't not pick it up. My friends are of the opinion that I will read anything, and I am nothing if not predictable.
I'll start with the trigger warnings. I expect dark romances to come with a lot of trigger warnings. They're dark, after all. But the list provided by the author is nowhere near sufficient. In fact, based on surrounding controversy, I've been led to believe that this has been done on purpose. Based on how much of the book is built on shock value and disgust, I'm unsurprised. Transphobia and incest are two huge trigger warnings that are left out, and I was horrified to learn that the transphobia included was INTENTIONAL, but I'll circle back on this later. If you're going to include a list of trigger warnings for your book, you cannot let it be incomplete to shock and potentially trigger your readers. They aren't even rare trigger warnings. I also believe that rape and sexual assault should be labeled differently, and also believe that child rape/sexual assault should be its own category, but even if you disagree with me on that, transphobia and incest having the place they do in this book means you cannot just 'forget' them.
But, on to the actual book. This romance follows Skylenna (I know), a 19-year-old girl reeling from the recent death of her sister who decides to fulfill her last wish and change the way patients are treated at Emerald Lake Asylum. After 80 pages of fucking around and terribly fulfilled exposition we finally meet her love interest: Patient 13, or 'Dessin,' who is supposedly the most dangerous and feared patient in the entire asylum. Dessin has DID (Disassociative Identity Disorder, called split personality disorder in the book) and checked himself in four years ago. He has been unresponsive to the torturous treatments but after he tries to break out, Skylenna is given 90 days with her kinder method to find the name of the host and give him control back. Her failure means his execution, and the growing attraction between them just raises the stakes higher.
Intriguing plot, right? Sure. I'll come right out and say I never thought a patient-caretaker asylum romance could end well, and I'm both horrified and delighted to see I've been proven wrong. This book starts off with an Author's Note about how the portrayal of DID is purposefully given to a dark, murderous character who is treated badly to reflect our society. I doubt Brandi herself has any experience with DID or the written portrayal would not be as heinously despicable as it is, but who knows. I personally don't think anyone without DID has any business writing about DID, especially if this is what they're going to do with it. Brandi is nowhere near skilled or nuance enough and instead added another entry to a long list of horrible, malicious DID representation in media.
While we're on the heavy hitters, I might as well go and discuss the transphobia. I am a trans reader, and because I suffer from a chronic case of hating myself I decided to read the book myself and see exactly how bad it was. You'd never guess, but it was to my joy (sarcasm) even worse than I feared! I'll set the stage for you so you yourself don't have to read it. Warnings for transphobia and incest.
In order to get to Patient 13, Skylenna is tasked with the other patients in the asylum to work her way to his room. One of these is Niles, a man who believes himself to be Cupid, and was arrested for kidnapping men and women and locking them in basements until they starved. Skylenna speaks with him until he finally admits the source of his belief. As a child, Niles was trafficked as a child sex worker in order to feed his family after his father abandoned them. One of his customers was Charlotte, a trans woman. She is described as strange and odd with heavy make-up and later referred to as "a woman with male parts." This child predator is revealed, as a shocking twist, to be Niles' transitioned father. Disgusted by the treatment, he decided he couldn't handle a world where that was the only love he knew and decided to become Cupid.
I was horrified enough by this and genuinely had my entire day ruined thereafter. Trans women and trans femmes already have such limited rep, and when they do, it's often horrible things like this. I was further disgusted to learn that the author said in an Instagram post that this choice was INTENTIONAL and done despite the author knowing it was wrong. She made the character purposefully ignorant on transwomen with the intention for Skylenna to "challenge" these views and grow in the future. But when your only trans representation is a predator, something dangerous, disgusting, and humane, you are not setting up any of this to be accomplished. I don't believe a cis writer has any fucking business writing an evil, monstrous trans woman, and there was absolutely no reason for this rep. Skylenna does not grow or change in her views on trans women because there are no other trans women in the book besides Charlotte to give her the opportunity for it. Charlotte's inclusion is purely for shock and disgust, clear by every single bit of writing framing the scene.
This is the only prominent bit of LGBTQ+ rep in the book, but there is a throwaway paragraph about Skylenna's sister Scarlett that describes her choosing to "mate with the same sex" because men only care about women spreading their legs. If Charlotte's depiction wasn't already giving me radfem/TERF vibes, this would have sealed the deal. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but I'm just saying. I have a special poison in my heart for the idea that women “choose” to be with other women to escape men, mostly because it still centers that attraction around men (even if it’s a rejection of them), and to top it all off after Scarlett goes off and sleeps with other women she comes home and scrubs herself raw. It might be her history of sexual abuse, or it could be homophobia, and Brandi's shitty writing means I have no idea which it is. This is yet another case of shitty rep remaining unbalanced by positive rep in the book. Maybe just don't have it at all. You in fact do not have to force yourself to grapple with the idea that trans women and sapphic women exist if all you're going to do is portray them through a lens of disgust and horror.
At least now I get to talk about the fun stuff because even beyond the problematic aspects of the book, it's just god-awful. First of all, can we PLEASE talk about the names. Skylenna? Dessin? DeiSzek? Suseas? And those are just CHARACTER names. The fact that her dark dystopia asylum story is set in a country named DEMENTIA had me rolling with laughter. The 'Survivah' faction of bureaucrats was also a Choice. I get I'm supposed to feel bad for no one but Dessin getting Skylenna's name right, but honestly, Sky or Skye would have been much better than what we ended up with. I unfortunately cannot feel any sort of heat for a man named after the French word for drawing.
The world-building and plot both fall apart under the barest hint of pressure. The plot jumps around at random and I have no idea how Dessin keeps escaping despite being the scariest patient. How he doesn't have 24/7 surveillance, especially after his escape attempt and ultimatum set forth, is beyond me. And to that point, he's not even scary! There is no sense of darkness or 'mind games' promised in the blurb. He's just evasive and annoying. The character art is beyond laughable-- how a man confined for 4 years and regularly tortured manages to have rippling pectorals and biceps for days, not to mention a wonderful tan, is again beyond me. The tone and pacing of this book are never consistent and lead to an all-around poor reading experience. How we go from an 80-page build-up to her wanting to drop her panties immediately... is, for a third time, absolutely beyond me.
The world-building itself is also just... bad. Women are held to impossible ideals in Dementia and are subjected to basically government-mandated anorexia, leaving them weak and feeble to the point where city streets have fainting couches on corners. I ignored the ridiculousness of this for my own sanity, but Brandi seems to add this dystopia element for the sole purpose of Skylenna being oppressed for having boobs, an ass, and "golden skin" (whatever that means). Her being stick thin and still having double Ds, according to the character art, was certainly a choice and just proves to me that Skylenna and Dessin are copy-pasted romance ideals set against a shocking, gory background like that's supposed to make them shine any differently from any other romance book I've ever read.
Listen. It's clear the book does not pride itself on accuracy, well-conducted research or a thought-out world, so let's hold off on that and judge it for what we are apparently all here for: a sexy, dark, forbidden romance. I saw this was promoted by the author using the forced proximity trope but she could have just dropped proximity from that entirely. This romance was drier than a desert in August. I felt no build-up, probably because there wasn't any, and I put myself through 351 pages of drivel for not a single spicy scene, which at this point is another problematic aspect that targeted me personally. Dessin is little more than a bottom of the barrel, bargain bin Rhysand and taking one look at Brandi's Instagram and Tiktok is enough to prove the connection. We even get the added bonus of his tragic backstory revolving around atrocities committed against his mother and his sibling, like that's what we really needed in 2022.
In conclusion, The Pawn and the Puppet reads like a Wattpad draft that I cannot believe was published in this day and age. I'm unsurprised to learn that Brandi ignored beta readers with relevant degrees in the elements she chose to portray in her work in favor of the ones who were patting her on the back, which I can understand. It can be a little tough to hear that your self-insert OC x Rhysand fanfiction isn't quite up to par, but it's the truth. Even beyond the mind-bogglingly problematic aspects and the "dark" elements that have completely crossed the line in this book, there is none of the dark allure that will keep a reader wanting to turn the page. In the end, I wanted to commit myself for the emotional spiral this book send me on.
I'd recommend you don't pick up or promote this book for your trans friends, but if you don't have any, do it for yourself. Your sanity is worth more than this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Transphobia
Moderate: Incest
soniajoy98's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
0.5
horrifying graphic trauma porn do NOT read for your own mental health please
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Animal death, Drug use, Incest, Self harm, Transphobia, Dementia, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Infidelity
tashah245's review against another edition
DNF. Harmful representation of mental illness and the trans community. Additionally, poor world building and inconsistencies in the story/writing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Incest, Mental illness, Sexual assault, and Transphobia
stablebiscuit's review
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
Lots of typos throughout this book. The editor didn’t do a very good job, unfortunately, which was distracting.
The book itself was good, despite the tropes being overdone. Also- definite transphobia on the author’s part. A trans character rapes her son… can we stop the “crossdressing man that is a rapist” trope for trans women? It’s disgusting.
The book itself was good, despite the tropes being overdone. Also- definite transphobia on the author’s part. A trans character rapes her son… can we stop the “crossdressing man that is a rapist” trope for trans women? It’s disgusting.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, Trafficking, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, and Sexual harassment
ganseyboy69's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Sexual violence, and Violence
Moderate: Mental illness
Minor: Domestic abuse, Transphobia, and Vomit