A review by rachellena
Puck: (A Twisted Lit Novel) by Kim Askew, Amy Helmes

2.0

This book was a quick, fun retelling of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The pacing was good and the cast of characters were fun. There was enough action to keep you interested and the slow unfolding of the character's backstory was very satisfying. It was a very enjoyable read, although I often stopped to wonder when was the last time either of the authors actually spoke to a teenager (one particularly vivid example was when a character said "fo shizzle" without any irony.)

That being said, I am so mad about the revelation of Puck's first secret. I am furious. And not at Puck, but at the author's who made this choice.

Spoiler

They could have chosen anything to have been the catalyst for Puck's admittance into this program, but they decided to use false pedophile allegations. This was such a disgusting and dangerous choice to make that I almost stopped reading right then. And it was played off in an almost "aw shucks" sort of way. Like it was just another lie Puck told. They briefly tried to ground it in the gravity of the situation with Nissa's reaction, but it was still a grossly unfortunate route for the author's to take. Normalizing false pedophile/rape/molestation in this way is so harmful and adds to the rape culture notion that people are mostly lying about their sexual assault. Especially since young girls like Puck are even more at risk for these sorts of atrocities as they are far less protected and far more likely to not be believed than children who are not in unstable family situations. Honestly, this whole aspect of the book makes me feel sick. I probably should have taken some time before writing this review as my emotions are possibly inhibiting my ability to fully articulate the issue I have with this. I'm truly, deeply disappointed in this. It was so fucking unnecessary.

(I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)