It started off great, I enjoyed Plum’s journey! I love the concept of women righting the wrongs of the judicial system and patriarchy but it was semi exclusionary in its feminism because they were pretty anti sex work and “women have vaginas and that’s what makes us women” TERF-y vibes. 

Pacing felt off, it would slow down and honestly it felt like two different books at times. The first half was much more interesting and the terrorism plot line as well but the two never fully meshed which led to me not enjoying the second half.

Sometimes too much telling over showing with overly descriptive writing of minute details but then important events would be rushed. I wanted to just get the book over with by the last 100 pages and think it should’ve been so much shorter. I never felt fully engaged and would set it aside after only 1 chapter to scroll on my phone instead and was rushing to finish it.

The guerrilla girl group mentioned in the synopsis felt more like an afterthought and I truly thought Plum would be more involved but then she wasn’t?! Missed opportunities everywhere.

It’s very feminist, the beauty industry is BS, most of the time but then it still continues to feed into it. For example, it’s all about how everybody is beautiful and dieting fails and your size shouldn’t stop you from living your life. But then it talks about “fckability” and how important waist trainers are/they're a must have and how you should wax off all your body hair? Like I’m afraid we’ve lost the plot, Walker.

Also very western/white feminist moment implying women who wear burkas or hijabs are inherently oppressed. There’s so much more nuance to that and some women wear hijabs/burkas for religious reasons, not because men force them to, so it felt a little lacking in intersectionality.

Despite the deep topics and addressing issues within society it lacked the nuance and depth desperately needed to make this kind of social commentary. I think it does make some important points on body acceptance and fighting the beauty/diet industries but it’s not anything new for me. All the things brought up are basic white woman feminism 101 and things I’ve learned from body positive non-fiction (Just Eat It by Laura Thomas, PhD- highly recommend). I think that made it less enjoyable because I wanted more of the guerrilla group action and we were only told about it after the fact, in bare minimum details, and I wanted more of that storyline.

Also not sure Satire is my thing? This is the second one I’ve read and I really didn’t like either one😭

I loooved Walker’s sophomore novel but if we’re going for a book on social commentary then I’m going to be extra critical about how it’s lack of intersectionality and it’s own issues of internalized misogyny.

I’d say if you want to read a book from Walker, read The Cherry Robbers instead, if I had read her debut first I probably never would’ve read TCR 🫠 It’s much better paced, has more complex well developed characters, and overall more entertaining/engaging.