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_micah_'s review against another edition
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Really, I needed something to space out to after an ADHD energy crash and Thérèse Plummer's narration of this was perfect for my purposes. Smiley does a nice job of keeping the character away from anything too cerebral, letting her stay curious but naïve, a combination comes across as quite sweet at times. The time and place are well-researched, and Smiley does an excellent job of inhabiting the world, carefully walking the fine line of dense 'truly historic' writing and anachronistic fluff. Overall, I enjoyed this, even if it was thin on plot at times.
Content notes: Regularly treats sex work in line with the 'Unproblematic Prostitution' trope (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnproblematicProstitution)--I suppose it can be nice to inhabit a cozy world where STI's are easily identified and avoided, where the house madam has the girl's best interests in mind, and where the working conditions are safe, if not pleasant. I mean, sure. I'll take it.
Finally, though, an oddly fatphobic red herring where the narrator gives oral sex to someone who is fat and, in his orgasm, he clutches her so close she becomes momentarily short of breath, an experience which leads her to consider him as a suspect in the serial killings. (I believe her naivete is supposed to make this believable, as it was, I was rolling my eyes.) In considering his fatness, she thinks about how the only fat people who exist are wealthy and lazy, and that she rarely sees fat people in California because everyone who isn't wealthy there has to do manual labour. This sidenote is completely unnecessary for the plot and also, like...there are fat people do manual labour and are still fat? Even if we're using her innocence card, she would have seen plenty of very fat people in her travels. It's just an odd decision for both Smiley and the Knopf editors to make in 2022.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Body horror, and Fatphobia
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