Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Ready? This book gets a good ol-fashioned NOPE from me. I wish that could be it. I wish that could be the beginning and the end of the review. Just, NOPE. It isn't though because this book has caused me to feel so much rage while reading that it has to come out. So, here we go (spoilers discussed below). This book is terrible. It wants to be something more than it is and it feels like author desperately wants to build a reputation as a dark gritty author (see: Gillian Flynn) but it fails. It's basically sex, incest, sex, incest, sex, oh, and more sex. Of course, there is alcoholism, self-hatred, and tons of mental anguish mixed in but the general tone of the book is that incest and sex causes mental anguish in victimized women who then either tun to sex as a cure (#irony), alcoholism, or suicide. So, here are a few things about that: 1 - I'm so, so, so sick of sexual abuse being used as the motivation behind women's actions in books. WE ARE MOTIVATED BY MORE THAN THAT #thankyouverymuch. It's lazy writing and it's pathetically presented in The Roanoke Girls. Not to mention, literally everyone turns a blind eye to what's going on? Family members? Hired help? Townsfolk. Yep, move right along. Nothing to see here. Just granddad gettin' it on with every female in the family. 2 - Women combat trauma by doing more than running away, becoming alcoholics, and destroying their lives. When did this become such a common literary trope? It gets all the eye rolls from me. Literally, there are chapters in The Roanoke Girls dedicated entirely to brief descriptions of how a woman just cannot handle being rejected and replaced by her abuser so she throws herself into suicide because that'll show him. There's not a strong woman in the book, not even Lane. I know other reviews disagree with me but, again, NOPE. 3 - It can't just be sexual abuse...no...it has to be incestuous sexual abuse! Over the course of 3 generations. Literally...the same dude abusing all of the women in his family, including his own daughters and grand-daughters, yet no one says a thing. Have we reached a point where sexual abuse in a book is so common that authors feel the need to push the envelope even further to earn head pats and fame for being the one willing to go there. 4 - Oh, and of course this incestuously abusive dude has to be depicted as THE GREATEST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO WOMEN because the women are basically throwing themselves at him, practically pleading to be manipulated and abused, then kill themselves or run away when he moves on to someone else. PLEASE! That's just disgusting. If I had to read one more time about how handsome granddad is or what a soothing voice he had, I was going to take this book to the backyard and burn it. Can we not romanticize sexual predators, please? Oh, yeah, and there's a cousin missing in all of this. Allegra (the cousin) disappeared so Lane (the main character) gets a call from dear old granddad saying she needs to come home. Right. Lane fled to California to escape the family but yup, she's going to come home to try to find her cousin. The police are on the case but no, Lane has to come back to this horrific place full of sex and abuse to solve the case. Only she finds herself hooking up with an old boyfriend because, sex.  I read to the end and was just glad it was over. This was an epic waste of time and doesn't deserve nearly the praise it's been receiving. It's try-hard and pathetic. There are way better books out there more deserving of your time.