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"Too clever. Not clever. Thinks too much, talks too much Hardly says a peep. Haughty but shy."

Silvia Moreno-Garcia weaves an extraordinary but cautionary tale of love, loss, desire, and racism through Vera, an unknown aspiring actress from Mexico, flown in and given the coveted role of the infamous Salome. What follows is equal parts inspiring and devastating.

This is the danger of being an intelligent woman of color with better ideas than your white male counterparts who isn't afraid to talk about them. The fear of being commoditized, sexualized, and fetishized. The familial and societal pressure to be the ideal woman and perfect wife and be thankful for it. The shame that comes with saying no and being given the label of 'ungrateful', instead of being surrounded by a loving support system. Women are expected to sit back and take abuse, accepting it with a smile, because it's never as bad as it could be. They were golden trophies up on a shelf to be seen and not heard, pawns in the games of men, objects of desire blamed for starting wars ignited by the spark of a man's short fuse. This book shows that even though hundreds of years have gone by, even though the methods of inflicting that pain may have evolved, women are still being shamed, oppressed, and hurt in the same ways that they used to be.

I may never recover from this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the ARC.