The Devil's Tree

Closer to 2.5 stars.

This book is, to put it simply, the literary version of a “B-movie” in the (mild) horror genre mixed with a made-for-TV romance from the early 2010s. It toes the line between cringe-inducing cliche and genuine entertainment while playing hopscotch on a lot of common tropes - some fine and some... troubling. That is to say: it's basically what you'd expect from what I described.

Just like “B-movies,” it handles matters of poverty, race, identity, and sexuality with all the care of a wild animal set loose in a room full of priceless, breakable items. While I did try to look beyond some of the less pleasant tropes - mostly because they're extremely prevalent in the horror genre - these issues did leave varying degrees of lingering, bad impressions.

I keep trying to articulate some of the worst issues, but a list is easier and I'm kind of mentally drained for reasons unrelated to this book (welcome to 2020's sequel, right?). So here we go:

* The black character, Keisha, dies first. Nobody is surprised, since this book is basically trying really hard to be a horror movie. (But still, it's a bad trope!)

* People living in trailer parks and surviving through the aid of welfare money are shamed intensively by the narrating character, Kaitlyn.

* Keisha's struggles with racism and being in an interracial relationship while living in a small town are explored not as part of her character but rather as something for her white friend, Kaitlyn, to gawk at, pity, and awkwardly attempt to relate to after she's been killed.

* The “I don't like this person at all, but wow they get the hormones flowing, maybe I do like them after all... eew gross of course I don't... wait maybe I do...” trope plays heavily in this book, to the point I found it sickening. Kaitlyn is basically a tsundere at several points in the book.

* A possessed teenager is used to taunt a gay man, implying that because he's gay he'd automatically be interested in the seventeen-year-old. I get that it's a “demons are gross” moment, but the implication is messed up and a very harmful misconception present in society. The book would have been better without this scene.

* Keisha is turned into a catty, jealous brat as a ghost. I'd pretend to be surprised, but that attitude is a common trope applied to black women/girls in media.

* Kaitlyn frequently compares her experience as a white girl in a trailer park to those of minorities facing bigotry - all while patronizingly pitying them and waxing poetic about what a good, non-bigoted person she herself is, and virtue signaling how much she feels for their struggles.

* Kaitlyn belittles Dylan - allegedly one of her friends - for being unattractive... until, of course, he takes his glasses off and magically becomes hot. (Yay for driving home the negative association for people with glasses?)

Those are just the questionable tropes. The standard fare for horror, YA, and romance are also peppered throughout in large quantities, making this (very slightly) unique story feel as if I've read and/or seen it a million times. That's a shame because quite a few of the story elements are fascinating or entertaining but the excess tropes and a completley unlikable, terrible person as the narrating character ruin the book for me.

Kaitlyn is the kind of two-faced, judgmental, self-centered person I actively avoid in real life. She thinks she's somehow better than other people who live in trailer parks (and the south in general), has horrible judgmental opinions of even the people she allegedly likes, and can't quite grasp that her life experiences as a straight, white girl will never be the same as those of minorities who face bigotry. (And don't even get me started about her virtue signaling!)

And you know what else? She's a crappy friend, too! At one point, Kaitlyn insults a friend for offering financial assistance so she can grieve the loss of her boyfriend and cites refusing to “accept handouts” like her mother who gets welfare (which, by the way, also goes to her since she's a teenage dependent). She even has the disrespectful audacity to demand the best friend of her dead boyfriend stop using the nickname she outright admits he liked just because her selfish butt doesn't like it - and she doesn't ask nicely, either; she yells and scolds as if it were a slur or something instead of a nickname. It's just ‘Hunt' instead of his full first name of ‘Hunter,' not something demeaning like ‘Shnookie Wookie Pookie BooBoo Child.'

This doesn't set well with me at all, and the constant whining of Kaitlyn made me want to drop a clue-by-four on her so many times that it took away from the enjoyment of the book. Likewise, every time Kaitlyn went on a tangent about her virtues vs. the racism around her or started being a whiny brat, I wanted to put the book down and walk away.

I didn't pick this book to read some fictional white girl be a mouthpiece for the experiences of a black character killed off in the first few moments of the story. (If that's the focus of the story, maybe don't kill the black character and instead let her tell her own story!) Nor did I pick it to read the illogical hot-and-cold thoughts of a girl who berates her dead boyfriend's best friend for wearing glasses, being intelligent, being less attractive, and having ‘nerdy' interests yet also gets inappropriately “hormonal” (the tacky term used in the book) when he simply touches one of her legs while offering emotional support. All of this comes with a bunch of cliche Southern-isms peppered in for good measure. You know the kind: ludicrous analogies spoken by stereotypes on TV but only rarely, if ever, used by us in real life. (???You???re three gallons of crazy in a two-gallon bucket, Dylan Anderson, you know that, right????)

I rolled my eyes in annoyance at a few scenes, but at others I found myself drawn to the story and eager to discover what might happen next. I vaguely felt sorry for Kaitlyn's lot in life, then I wanted to smack her for being a terrible person. And it would be fair play, since she thinks it's okay to smack the guy she likes-but-denies-liking hard for simply smiling at the very same quote I shared in the previous paragraph. So yeah. It was a bit of a rollercoaster getting past the narrator and obnoxious tropes to actually enjoy the story.

Like I said: it has the same traits as a B-movie. It's annoying but also entertaining with mediocre but not terrible writing. The plot is just slightly unique enough to keep interest, but the ending isn't worth the mental exhaustion caused by trudging through Kaitlyn's headspace and the lore is... questionable at best.

I hoped for so much better from this book and honestly feel quite let down. Were it not for wanting to make progress toward my reading goal, I'd have quit reading this one midway or sooner. I definitely wish I'd quit reading before the final chapter, which takes an already unsatisfying ending and amps it to eleven. I'm disappointed, because the story this book tells could have easily been a perfect match for me. But alas, it just wasn't meant to be.

(Note: I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley. The review is made voluntarily and contains my own, personal opinions. I am not compensated for sharing this review.)