Not Your Average Damsel

My soul ached. My heart pinched. My skin tightened. My stomach rolled. My body reeled. My heart squeezed. My chest thumped. Is this really the go-to trick in an author’s arsenal for describing emotions? My blank blank-ed? I can confirm that it is, in fact, the go-to trick that Natalie Sue tapped for her book I Hope This Finds You Well. Blanks blanking were her preferred method of showing character emotion. There was one on every other page. And- I really don’t do book reviews. Ever. No one asked my opinion- so who am I to think that I should offer it up to the world? But, this time I just had to pen a Goodreads review. I had to warn folks. When a great initial idea and concept gets dragged down by poor writing and the “get the guy in the end” trope, you have to warn a bitch. I was so let down. Not many books make me not want to finish. This one though? My eyes. . . rolled.

Truthfully, my unfinished book list is quite short. I can count only about 5 books that I have slid into the DNF pile throughout my whole life. (I mean, not counting AP English trash-classics like Walden— that I pretended to read, skimmed, and wrote an A paper on. ) However, joining the DNF list this month, is God of the Woods by Liz Moore. The book reviews were great: everyone else apparently loved it. Not this girl. Feels like an era of my life- going to camp with rich, white kids- that I need not repeat. Mind you, my camp stories were 3-days-long-at-a-pop at best (we were not rich, after all). And the plot of mine had the polite, rule-following, dorky, brown, fat girl getting shamed into square-dancing with the boy who licked his hands and ate snot. I mean, no one died in my story, but no thank you. I still feel like I lived the book already and the voice of the actor reading was the final nail in the coffin. One [incomplete] star.

And the irony of me sitting here, with my moody, wordy and -I am sure repetitive and weak- writing criticizing the writing of two published authors is not lost to me. I just don’t care. This is my space. This peek into my mind is free. No one wasted $16.99 on a paperback or a precious hold slot on Libby to hear my thoughts. My wordy-moody, repetitive and weak style has a home here. And at my age, you give no fucks about sharing your imperfections- in fact you kinda flaunt them.

/damsel