A review by cass_lit
Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson

1.5

Before I say anything else about this: THERE IS NO EXCUSE TO USE THE R-WORD. You can make it clear that a child is being bullied in a million other ways. Reading the r-word just once will absolutely ruin my experience and opinion of a book, but Ash Davison uses it FOUR TIMES. ONE WASN’T EVEN BULLYING, it’s a kid *thinking* about his mom!!!! Absolutely not necessary and, in my opinion, reflects poorly on the author and the book. 

Now, for the rest of my review:

I hated this. I wanted to DNF, but I also wanted to be able to rate this low and explain for anyone else considering reading it. I need everyone to know that my review is fully informed. But then I decided my sanity was more important; I decided to DNF and felt great about it. Since I had decided not to continue, I went to read others’ reviews and *one* on here said if you get past the first quarter of the book then it’s so worth it. I was excited for this book, I bought this book, I wanted to like it! Now, I was already at 37%, but I thought maybe the reviewer was just estimating. I picked Damnation Spring back up, upped my audio speed a bit (not easy, the narrators are definitely trying to give rural logging community), and tried again.

Unfortunately, it never got better for me. As I said, I hated this. I did not like the writing style to begin with, and as soon as the r-word mentions started I *hated* the writing style. 

Now to my more substantive issues with the story.
  • All the adults suck. Colleen bugged me more than Rich (SO whiny), but god they both sucked. You’re adults. Communicate. Or do something. Anything. We didn’t even get to read about the infidelity for something fun, it got like two mentions. I hated Ridge but god Colleen just leave him. Also, fuck you, Daniel (and that’s coming from an environmentalist). 
  • The POV switches to Chub felt not super important and random and were kinda just as boring as C & R’s (more understandable for him because he’s five though). Random sister POV there at the end too?
  • The “mystery” or conflict doesn’t start until 45-50%. I didn’t even know there was a mystery or that this would be the plot point it became until those reviews during the period I tried to DNF. All the first half did for me was make me hate everyone in this town so… basically nothing. 
  • An absolutely individual, personal issue: I work in the environmental field; I started this while at a conference with other environmental professionals expecting it to be a fictionalized Silent Spring/Dark Waters (Exposure). I was sorely disappointed. 
  • Real quote from one of the adults in this story: “fifteen’s old enough to breed her.” Also unnecessary: dog murder. 
  • The end. Again, I didn’t care about these characters so it didn’t impact me too much emotionally, it just felt traumatic and draining. Writing a sad book doesn’t make you profound. 
  • Finally, it was Way Too Long. So long. So much of it was dragged out incessantly, but other parts were just completely unnecessary. 
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