Guys.
I can’t with this book.
It may have actually given me an existential crisis. I don’t even know how to unpack this, or if I should.
I’m a practicing Catholic Democrat, so I guess I was bound to have some feelings about this book, since it’s from a “Catholic perspective.”
I… just… wow.
This lovely book is a “modern retelling” of Rapunzel. An upstanding yet mischievous young Catholic lad scales a tower and finds a young girl. I’m going to spoil a couple things that you’d find out very soon anyway: she’s up there because her mom is a radical (like…radical) feminist who isolates her from the world because she doesn’t want her daughter to become a vessel for a man to spew his sewage (semen, she means semen) into and be forced to submit to his dominion and raise his spawn. She adopted her daughter from Mexico because she refused to be part of a heterosexual relationship and she belongs to a club of like minded women. She’s trying hard to force her daughter into a lesbian relationship and despises every feminine thing her daughter likes. Drama ensues.
I won’t say Dorman isn’t a fairly compelling author, but I spent the entire book thinking two things: there’s no way that’s actually what they think liberals/feminists are like…right? and Honestly, shit like this is why people hate us.
If you’re wondering if Dorman uses absolutely every opportunity to shoehorn in some weird agenda about how women should accept rescuing because they’re precious and should stay home with their babies or abortion or the 18 year old male lead’s extremely deep theological opinions about the sacredness of marriage – well, of course she does. (Oh and almost every homosexual male is a sexual predator so there’s that.) And the thing is, theologically I actually agree with a fair amount of this stuff, so someone who generally doesn’t would probably want to jump off a cliff. But I have one foot in the feminist/social justice/Democrat circles and one in Catholic circles and the characterization of liberals as being absolutely heartless, ridiculous villains just infuriated me and devalued every decent point she had and was so off-putting I’m just mad about it. This could’ve been handled with any level of sensitivity, and the opportunity was thoroughly missed. I wish I could say that the characters are just exaggerated versions of their positions since it’s a fairytale reboot, but the Catholic family is a slightly idealized but pretty accurate representation of a Catholic family.
Fuck this book.
Also, apparently liberals hate breastfeeding because it makes you look third world. Who knew!
(I’m giving it two stars because it really is well written and decently plotted, just absolutely infuriating.)