Author: Paige Dearth
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
Today is Paige Dearth Day on my blog - I'm reviewing two books by this author and I wish I had better news to deliver than I do.
This novel, in some ways, is autobiographical. According to her bio in the book, the author was raped by a live-in uncle when she was very young, and this is an exploration of how that might have panned-out had things gone differently from how they did unfold in the author's own life. As far as that goes, it's admirable. There is nothing worse than violating a child's trust and confidence, especially in such an abhorrent manner, but this novel was so front-loaded with abuse, and pain and torment that it was for me, unreadable. I made it to page 74 and I knew I didn't want to being regaled with a non-stop story of endless and unremitting pain for another 360 or so pages.
The problem for me was that it didn't read like a novel. It read like a police report, and it was consequently unappealing. The text was dry as a bone and did nothing to draw me in or make me feel like I could empathize with the main character Alessa, who herself wasn't exactly the smartest Smarty in the Smarty box.
On top of that I had issues with Alessa's inability to report this abuse and the poor advice she was given by someone in whom she confided. I know people who are abused typically have problems in revealing what's happened to them either through shame or through fear, or because they don't even realize that what's happening to them isn't appropriate, but the way it was written here wasn't convincing.
Instead to going with her to the police, Zoe, the mom of Alessa's best friend, set up Alessa with sufficient money to run away, where she got ripped off by a seedy landlady for a piece-of-trash apartment in a lousy part of town. I knew exactly what was going to happen next, because it was telegraphed way in advance. All the mystery was removed and I was left looking at yet more abuse piled onto what had already happened. Zoe in effect, became just another abuser.
One major problem is that there were no shades of gray here. In some ways it's understandable since this is a debut novel, but it doesn't make it a better read. For example, in the portion that I read, men were presented universally as rapists waiting to happen, which is bullshit and insulting.
A more seasoned author would have found a way to leaven writing of this horrific nature with something lighter. They would have put a dash of hope in there instead of repeatedly dashing hope. They would have found a way to add a sprinkle of beauty somewhere, somehow, to bring something better into this world of unrelenting awfulness, but this author did nothing of the sort. It became, therefore, a dire litany of abuse, bad decisions, and poor advice, and it wasn't entertaining or engrossing to read, it was just depressing and despite the fact that these things actually do happen to children, the writing paradoxically made this novel feel unrealistic. I couldn't get beyond chapter nine and I can't recommend this novel.
I know it was lousy what the author went through, and I admire her attempt to put this into fictional form and get the word out to people, but she failed to convince me that this was the best-advised way to do that.
