I finished this book for a book club meeting I didn’t even make it to but I think I’m narrowing down on the most common source for my most-disliked recommended books (it’s Vox.com). I’ll just take these with a grain of salt from now on because this one was not one I really enjoyed.
I just never got into it. Taddeo is telling three stories of three real women but I never understood why. They’re also told in alternating chapters which is discombobulating and as much as more variety would have been nice, I’m not sure I would have been able to keep track of them.
It was also disconcerting to follow two stories of what were essentially women in unhappy marriages wrapped around the story of a teenage girl groomed by her English teacher. Cue “One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other.” I get it that these are all three women/girls who are unhappy in their own ways but it’s jarring to jump from “woman cheating on her spouse” to “girl abused by older authority figure”. I didn’t like it.
Overall this was a book I was pretty happy to put behind me and I feel like I’m already setting in place the mental blocks to forget it. I’m having to bring back more than I would like just to write this review. Maybe there is a target audience for the sad lives of real women but why we got a whole book out of it continues to mystify me.
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