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A review by alexblackreads
Candy by Kevin Brooks
2.0
I like Kevin Brooks's writing style, and I loved the ending. It left me with this feeling of incompleteness, a finishing of the storylines with a lack of closure. The story was never about Candy, it was about Joe and his life and obsession with this girl, so the ending made sense to me and felt perfect for the story.
But that was about it for the things I liked. For starters, the racism in this book is a lot. And it's not really about racism. They point it out a few times (the father being prejudiced about his daughter's black boyfriend), but for the most part it's just written as a bunch of big scary black men are the bad guys pimping out desperate, addicted white teenage girls. It's beyond uncomfortable and not remotely what the story was about. I'd have different feelings if it was making a point of the racism, but it rarely felt like it was.
Second, the whole story is about this girl, but it's not about her. It's named after her and her existence is the catalyst for the events that unfold, but she's barely treated as a person. She's a weird combination of manic pixie dream girl and damsel in distress, but never a full person in her own right. The main character meets her and immediately becomes obsessed, even though he knows nothing about her. She talks about her beauty and how she's struggled with jealousy and being treated different after growing up to be incredibly beautiful, but that's literally all the main character sees in her. They have no connection, he just sees a beautiful girl and half loses his mind. But it doesn't seem like a critique of that either. It's treated as real emotion in the book instead of some twisted version of love that isn't real.
Not a fan of this one. But because I did enjoy his writing style, I plan to read more. I'm hoping some of his other books are better because I've heard better things about them, but I wouldn't recommend this one.
But that was about it for the things I liked. For starters, the racism in this book is a lot. And it's not really about racism. They point it out a few times (the father being prejudiced about his daughter's black boyfriend), but for the most part it's just written as a bunch of big scary black men are the bad guys pimping out desperate, addicted white teenage girls. It's beyond uncomfortable and not remotely what the story was about. I'd have different feelings if it was making a point of the racism, but it rarely felt like it was.
Second, the whole story is about this girl, but it's not about her. It's named after her and her existence is the catalyst for the events that unfold, but she's barely treated as a person. She's a weird combination of manic pixie dream girl and damsel in distress, but never a full person in her own right. The main character meets her and immediately becomes obsessed, even though he knows nothing about her. She talks about her beauty and how she's struggled with jealousy and being treated different after growing up to be incredibly beautiful, but that's literally all the main character sees in her. They have no connection, he just sees a beautiful girl and half loses his mind. But it doesn't seem like a critique of that either. It's treated as real emotion in the book instead of some twisted version of love that isn't real.
Not a fan of this one. But because I did enjoy his writing style, I plan to read more. I'm hoping some of his other books are better because I've heard better things about them, but I wouldn't recommend this one.