A review by vivacissimx
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins

3.0

Let me begin by saying there are narratives of women who leave their families and children which make no excuses but are nonetheless carefully and, dare I say it, compellingly written. This is not one of them. This is self-pity. The narrator makes herself deeply known but the trick is, they aren't worth knowing. She has exactly two states: deeply apathetic and extremely horny, and both of them are coping mechanisms. I picked this up because the title is beautiful, but by the end I was clueless as to who this "loved" person is, and very much not convinced that the narrator identifies themselves as having agency in their own decisions.

The writing is gorgeous (although it melds into itself) but truly I am tired of white authors masturbating in front of us and expecting applause after.