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A review by jacquilynn
Feral by B. K. Evenson, James Demonaco
2.0
I received this as an ARC in a Goodreads contest
I keep going back and forth between 2 and 3, I was going to be generous with 3 stars but I couldn't. I enjoyed the first 50ish pages before it started to decline and then it got better towards the end. I hate to say this but you can tell that it was written by men.
The main character is Allie who sees the world more or less come to an end after a fatal lab accident. For most of the novel she is 19 years old in a society of only women, and is her sister’s only caretaker. Allie is so difficult to like being arrogant, angry, and sometimes sad, but her emotions are very shallow and don’t feel real. She is awful to everyone in the camp including her sister.
My main issues with the book are how casually the rape and unjustified imprisonment are glossed over and just seem to be okay with everyone in the book. The other is the representations of the women are terrible. You can have tough characters or soft characters but they need to be humanized, this book didn’t do that. I hated everyone in the book except Sam. I don’t know if women would just “turn gay” without men around but it was a bit disgusting to read one girl trying to seduce another, who just had a concussion/head injury while her baby sister is sleeping (but she wasn’t) in the next bed. The one character who was initially gay was another generally awful character she was crass but also wanted to “teach her girlfriend a lesson” by giving her the silent treatment when she messed up handling a prisoner. I’m actually pretty disappointed that the authors felt the need to drop not only a love story into this, but a love at first or second sight story. In the end it’s important for the plot but it was hello, bye, I’m totally in love with you. The narration was difficult to follow as well, mostly it was from Allie's point of view, but other characters also had chapters and then there was a separate narrator, when the narrator broke in I couldn't always tell if it was in a character's POV or not, then which character. As mine was an ARC it may not have been the final edition and there were mistakes with who was supposed to be speaking and who was involved in conversations, at one point there were four people were talking and in my copy they were all Holly.
The world building was good but not enough to redeem the other parts of this book. It had the potential to be a really profound story but came up very short.
I keep going back and forth between 2 and 3, I was going to be generous with 3 stars but I couldn't. I enjoyed the first 50ish pages before it started to decline and then it got better towards the end. I hate to say this but you can tell that it was written by men.
The main character is Allie who sees the world more or less come to an end after a fatal lab accident. For most of the novel she is 19 years old in a society of only women, and is her sister’s only caretaker. Allie is so difficult to like being arrogant, angry, and sometimes sad, but her emotions are very shallow and don’t feel real. She is awful to everyone in the camp including her sister.
My main issues with the book are how casually the rape and unjustified imprisonment are glossed over and just seem to be okay with everyone in the book. The other is the representations of the women are terrible. You can have tough characters or soft characters but they need to be humanized, this book didn’t do that. I hated everyone in the book except Sam. I don’t know if women would just “turn gay” without men around but it was a bit disgusting to read one girl trying to seduce another, who just had a concussion/head injury while her baby sister is sleeping (but she wasn’t) in the next bed. The one character who was initially gay was another generally awful character she was crass but also wanted to “teach her girlfriend a lesson” by giving her the silent treatment when she messed up handling a prisoner. I’m actually pretty disappointed that the authors felt the need to drop not only a love story into this, but a love at first or second sight story. In the end it’s important for the plot but it was hello, bye, I’m totally in love with you. The narration was difficult to follow as well, mostly it was from Allie's point of view, but other characters also had chapters and then there was a separate narrator, when the narrator broke in I couldn't always tell if it was in a character's POV or not, then which character. As mine was an ARC it may not have been the final edition and there were mistakes with who was supposed to be speaking and who was involved in conversations, at one point there were four people were talking and in my copy they were all Holly.
The world building was good but not enough to redeem the other parts of this book. It had the potential to be a really profound story but came up very short.