Charlotte Kersten

Year published: 2022

Category: Adult fantasy

Representation: F/f, one perspective character in a past relationship

Summary:  In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina’s love story will shock them all.

Though the women start out wary of one another, judging each other’s stories, gradually they begin to realize that they may have more in common than they supposed . . . What really brought them here? What secrets will they reveal? And is it too late for them to rescue each other?

My thoughts: Please note that there are huge spoilers in this review!

I gave a copy of this to my therapist for Christmas before I read it and now that I have, I’m not so sure that it’s as appropriate a gift as I thought it was lol. While I think it’s an intelligent and cleverly written book with some interesting things to say, there are a few significant things that didn’t work for me.

I would say that the book’s strongest point is how it explores the power of women telling their stories, sharing who they actually are, while showing how these stories were taken from them – how they were dissected and regurgitated and turned into crass spectacles by the media. It’s a matter of owning one’s trauma narrative as opposed to having it co-opted and consumed by a voracious, unsympathetic audience. There is a really powerful section where they talk about how they were all blamed for the terrible things that happened to them; the endless, contradictory, impossible expectations that are put on women who go through such things. This part of the book struck me as timely, astute and all-too true.

The other bit that I love is how they gradually bond over time, from Ashlee and Bernice becoming unlikely friends and roommates to how consistently kind and insightful Raina is to everyone in the group. The book is also very funny in places, especially when it comes to all things Ashlee and Ruby:

“You’re triggering Bernice by looking dead,” says Ashlee.
“I’m triggering myself by being me,” says Ruby.

The main thing that doesn’t work for me is that this process that is supposed to be about them reclaiming their narratives is actually just another massive piece of exploitation and betrayal – it turns out that the therapist who brought them together is actually Rainia’s husband in a hyper-realistic skin suit (?) and he is recording their therapy sessions to put them on TV. Yet while this is the case, they are still inexplicably empowered at the end of the book. The idea might be that the positive effects come from how they bond and come together after Will’s betrayal, but I don’t necessarily know A) how narratively satisfying this is and B) how clear the author makes it in text.

Some things about Will/Jake’s secret machinations don’t quite work for me even looking past the fact that he’s disguising himself in a hyper-realistic skin suit that manages to keep his wife from recognizing his face and voice while effortlessly mimicking being a trauma therapist for weeks on end. Jake is the story’s final villain but we only learn about him in Raina’s story, and we learn very little there. If he’s a stand-in for society’s voyeuristic, victim-blaming nature, I think this could have been a lot more effective if he had been better-developed. There’s a really clever bit where he’s still pretending to be Will the therapist and starts using pseudo-therapeutic language to defend himself as Jake while Rainia is talking about him. I can’t help but wish that we’d seen more of these sorts of mask-slips throughout.

By virtue of some characters contributing more than others during the therapy sessions, some are much more developed than others. Additionally, some of their stories are stronger than others. Gretel works the least well for me as a character because she is so incredibly distant, quiet and emotionally uninvolved. Ashlee’s story stands out, and not in a good way, because it’s the loosest fairy tale retelling and the “reality TV is exploitative and bad” angle just feels very tired to me while not gelling with the rest thematically.

All in all, I think this is a super unique read that has a lot going for it and I’m glad to have read it, but I can’t quite help but feel frustrated by some of the ways it fell short for me. And I may or may not have to clarify with my therapist that I am not at all concerned about her wearing a skin suit and recording my trauma for profit!