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A review by scherzoseven
My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
My husband is Indo, so I was initially very excited to see a queer Indo character in a horror novel! Unfortunately, that excitement waned with every passing chapter.
I wanted to like Agnes. I wanted my husband to feel seen in Agnes, but alas, she was written by a white woman who pats herself on the back for portraying Indo culture in a very othering and orientalist way. Sometimes it felt like the only reason Agnes was Indo was to make Roos look better for not being racist. Or to give Roos something new and "exotic" to react to (the scene where she cries over sambal comes to mind. Or the fact that they only ever eat spekkoek and kroepoek). Or so Roos could make a fetishistic observation about her skin or the texture of her pubes (barf).
There were so many little things about Agnes that I wish had been expanded on, like her past as a pianist or her time with her mother. Instead, the author focused on things that really would have been better handled in an Own Voices story.
Outside of Agnes, I found this book to be boring and unintentionally funny. By the end, every new horrific plot twist just made the whole scenario funnier to me. It's a gothic horror, of course we need to play trauma Bingo while a ghost throws around plaster saints, but it all just became a bit silly and over the top. We had back to back plot twists ofAgnes' abusive marriage (who could have seen that coming??), the forced drugging, racism fueled incest, all culminating in Wilhemijn's rotting corpse on the lawn! What's a little crushed glass on top of that?
My immersion had been erroding for a long time by this point, but there was a bit where Roos is explaining her connections to one of the statues and actually says, outloud, "my name means rose in Dutch." The issue with that is, even though the book is written in English, it's established early on that Roos only speaks Dutch. So she is speaking Dutch with another Dutch person when she says it! Roos betekent Roos in het Nederlands?? You don't say!
By the time the epilogue hit, I was already over it all, but needed to see how it ended. I was not disappointed.Roos gets off on murder charges because she is simply too small and weak to have killed anyone and it turns out powdered glass can't kill a person. The end. And even though they think she's psychotic and her face has been all over the newspapers, they just let her walk away. She forms a new life where she desperately waits to be able to fetishize Agnes again, who will have her whole self stripped away except for her love for Roos. What a happy ending for the white girl!
Giving this one star because my husband and I will be laughing about soft Indo pubes and Roos meaning Roos for a very long time. I also really liked Peter and Ruth and their relationships with their living people.
I wanted to like Agnes. I wanted my husband to feel seen in Agnes, but alas, she was written by a white woman who pats herself on the back for portraying Indo culture in a very othering and orientalist way. Sometimes it felt like the only reason Agnes was Indo was to make Roos look better for not being racist. Or to give Roos something new and "exotic" to react to (the scene where she cries over sambal comes to mind. Or the fact that they only ever eat spekkoek and kroepoek). Or so Roos could make a fetishistic observation about her skin or the texture of her pubes (barf).
There were so many little things about Agnes that I wish had been expanded on, like her past as a pianist or her time with her mother. Instead, the author focused on things that really would have been better handled in an Own Voices story.
Outside of Agnes, I found this book to be boring and unintentionally funny. By the end, every new horrific plot twist just made the whole scenario funnier to me. It's a gothic horror, of course we need to play trauma Bingo while a ghost throws around plaster saints, but it all just became a bit silly and over the top. We had back to back plot twists of
My immersion had been erroding for a long time by this point, but there was a bit where Roos is explaining her connections to one of the statues and actually says, outloud, "my name means rose in Dutch." The issue with that is, even though the book is written in English, it's established early on that Roos only speaks Dutch. So she is speaking Dutch with another Dutch person when she says it! Roos betekent Roos in het Nederlands?? You don't say!
By the time the epilogue hit, I was already over it all, but needed to see how it ended. I was not disappointed.
Giving this one star because my husband and I will be laughing about soft Indo pubes and Roos meaning Roos for a very long time. I also really liked Peter and Ruth and their relationships with their living people.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Incest, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicide, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Suicide attempt, and Murder
Moderate: Child abuse, Homophobia, Infertility, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Lesbophobia, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal death and Death of parent