Hurricane Girl

Wow I really enjoyed this. One of my favorite things about it, something I thought quite a lot especially as the book went along, is how the trauma impacts the main character very early on in the book and she appears so jaded to it from the outset that we actually never really get to see her "at her norm" throughout the book, I felt. So much of the book is spent after a very serious injury and traumatic event, one which makes you wonder if she is being the way she is because of the injury, or if she's just like that and not knowing makes this all the more intriguing.

This is a book about self sabotage, about self respect, about coping, about consent, and while all of those may seem obvious while reading they don't feel smeared on. They feel incredibly adequately thought out for someone who has had their entire life upended so quickly in ways that are dazzling to them. Despite the fact this dazzling display seems so obvious to us, the reader, to be able to determine when the good and bad are happening, I loved that things are all the more confusing to the character Alison herself. I really appreciated the lens this book lets us read from and the frankly surprising way that it unfolds.

While I started to read this and got about 30pgs in I was tempted to put it down, mark it as a DNF and move onto a different one but I'm so happy I stayed along for the ride. Everything that I was starting to pick out that was were “quirks” I wasn't enjoying - became the best part of this novel and made it whole.

The smallest side note — I once had a boss named Keith, and he was truly, truly awful. I felt for Alison real hard on that one lol

a very enjoyable bleak, black comedy with an interesting fractured structure that works incredibly well with the subject material. that structure though may also lead to it not staying with me for very long. also the ending was kinda underwhelming and a little sudden.