seilahuh's reviews
32 reviews

i'll keep it short. i loved this book. but i'm at the point of seeing how easily reviews can warp a book. like it's different coming at it with a familiarity with other high rated popular "romances", which rely upon the fmc being this weak, fawning, ultimately coerced object for desire to be exerted upon, to seeing angelika headstrong and capable mostly (the story clarifies what this means), intelligent and retaining her choice so much no man satisfied her but the one she would find in her morose profession. this was fresh for me, it was what i hadn't expected, nor really knew i needed to see written just like this.

and it's probably a faux pas to address reviews in my review but (would that be honest to me) i cannot believe how little people actually engaged with the story...over engaging pop, lib. (not genuine; androphilic, misogynistic) feminism. coming from that angle too of knowing quite more about that topic and having a stance more concrete than "it hurts men's feelings to gesture to smaller dicks being less satisfying for an individual woman," in comparison to the harrowing reality of real life misogyny being more than feelings. and being a more stringent (rad) feminist type myself, it's interesting to see how shallow concepts can rewrite entire material. i would've thought the story was so much worse if i had went in off these elements.

it's odd to me that a book where the woman as a contrast to so much popular material takes action, and is desiring and knows what she wants even despite virginal status, is not fragile and fawning, and is not just an object for an mmc to run over and rape, and carves out respect and stitches it even into his very skin and the fabric of his soul. . .would come off this unfavorable to women who have rated actual rape stories quite highly. even among a "dark" romance crew, i would think this would maybe resonate. but maybe it's that really foundationally, the elements that make that genre and type of story favorable make the reading experience incompatible here, because nothing here is actually forced no matter what reviews might say. that's not the actual story, not at all.

i don't believe angelika is unlikable, i have read quite unlikable characters. i think she's just not been given a chance for not being so docile and being sure of herself in many places, and there's a refusal to actually see the landscape that has made her vain in spite, and that makes this story. that makes william love her, and choose such a fiercesome woman who loves him just as equally, fairly, beautifully. it's really so sweet, i wish people, women, other mages would give themselves a chance for sweeter love without patriarchal force or abuse that would make them reject this story so vehemently for those differences.

i can't believe so many people put their stock in a rapist because he could write and had read a few books. especially believing these acts changed him rather than gave him new material to cover his charges in, ameliorating, and diagnosing them as symptom of white supremacist sickness, as excuse for "past" crimes. the novel is supposed to be demonstration of how much his solitude in prison has changed him for the better, and yet first there is no real apology. which even still would be worthless cause there is no apology for rape and the misogynoirist, horrific violence he did to black women as "practice" for white women who he remains grossly obsessed with even through his supposed awakening. he's supposedly changed for the better, and the collection is supposed to be integral for this perspective of his, but the novel is laden with hatred even after this "growth". every black person more vulnerable—lesbians, gays, women—than cleaver is a target for this hate he covers as revolutionary critique or hand holding for these 'misled' people who just existing are more dangerous and helpful to white supremacy than himself, who was actually a rapist and terror to them.

there is no world where i give such a disgusting piece any rating but a zero. there is nothing to be taken from this but irrefutable proof that rapists are not redeemable. his later trajectory (which was predictable) only casts an uglier shadow onto so called revolutionaries who ever exalted, saved, and platformed a man so obviously self-concerned, individualist, and evil to the core not because of racism which is malignant and genocidal. but because he as a man desired to be a complete oppressor, from rape to presidency. his only inhibitor was blackness he felt kept him from his right to take and have and rape unrepentantly, just like the white man. this story should have never been freed from folsom, and neither should cleaver.

mr. charles i fear i may have judged you too harshly. the language nearly drove me insane—writers always butcher black southern accents—but the theme is meaningful. i can only hope the people of his time took from this the message they were supposed to.

what a sick world we live in. 

evil is banal.

crc im so sorry, im so sorry that a ugly ass btch like this [nbs] would even say that ["identity politics is liberal and shallow"]. oh my god 😔

always breaks my heart to see expansive, accurate theory be reduced to nothing because people are hateful. 

who would like to be my partner in crime? i'm taking applications. 

i enjoyed this story, i loved owen and luna together. i hated when they were apart. i think the mystery is actually the least interesting part of the story in retrospect, but it's okay. being on the ride with them sufficed. it's an easy read, and that's enough sometimes.

there are people who will love this. as for me, it all just read boring, and the anachronisms were really weird rather than funny. also whatever good abt the story i could've possibly found became nil after dealing with yet another boring, sexist trope when one of the meagre three female characters (including the fmc) was written as a jealous, conniving jilted lover of the mmc who's got it out for the fmc. i am not a fan of #notlikeothergirls writing, it's not 2014. i just can't find the romance, or eroticism in positioning these female characters in opposition and making the mmc choose between them nor could i really find it similarly in his own existence in opposition to regular men or demons 'who wouldn't center the fmc's pleasure'. lucca is a flat character tbh, and yes it is a novella with limited space for proper characterization, but ik more about the fmc and her father than i do him. again, someone will love this story, but it is not me 🙏🏽

to think that John Redding Goes to Sea is one of the lesser liked stories from hurston. it's langston hughes harlem's older goth sister, that offers one somber ending to hughes' question. what happens to a dream deferred? it lies inert like trapped fireflies. catches like old twigs on water, desperate to go like little wooden ships to sea, struck tangled in the weeds. zora's story holds so much of her own ambitions within it, of her earliest fears that truly resonate with me even if it's too simplistic, "less humorous" than the rest of her work as people have said. it's succinct enough that it reads like a fable, easily transferable and resonant with our own lives. what happens to a dream deferred? well, it eventually dies.