Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

this one is for the girlies with complicated mother-daughter relationships and men trauma so i feel catered to

an excruciating (positive) look into overbearing mothers, the lifelong ramifications of sexualisation & abuse at a young age alongside feeling generally lost as an adult

while i do wish there was more plot (as in i was waiting for some huge climactic event i don’t feel i got) i have to give rose ruane her flowers for writing one of the most unflinching & accurate accounts of what it’s like to emotionally deal with being assaulted when you can’t even admit to yourself that maybe ambivalence is not consent. it got genuinely difficult to read at points and i think that’s testimony to how accurate it is.

reading about joyce on the flip side was also excruciating because i really genuinely could not stand her mother for the majority of the book until i realised that a lot of her actions are just reactions to her own life when she was younger. i will say i didn’t enjoy the big “twist� with this half of the story and found it to be almost a cop-out.

would be super intrigued about future releases. thank you to netgalley & the publisher for the ARC!