They Never Learn by Layne Fargo
My rating: 4/5 cats
If men could learn the error of their ways, I wouldn’t have to teach so many of them a lesson.
in the wake of the #metoo movement, the bookmarket has been flooded by nonfiction accounts written by survivors of sexual assault and empowerment fiction about girls fighting back against predatory men, with or without supernatural assistance. inevitably, with trend-surges like these, some of ‘em are great, some are trite, and some get lost or overlooked in the crowd because of reader-fatigue (on a not unrelated note: the literary community needs to come to terms with the fact that WWII has been amply covered and give it a rest for at least five years).
sobutanyway, what i’m saying is don’t overlook this one, because it’s a blast. sure, the message is unhealthy AF, with its ‘kill all the bad boys’ revenge attitude, but as a sink-into-it book about a sociopathic murderess on a mission, it’s fantastic—fast-flowing and gripping, full of intrigue and flawed characters.
bonus: i did not at all anticipate the seam where its two stories met, and it was delicious.
it was a rare-for-me-these-days single-day read, and i liked it even more than her debut, Temper. the two books share the same kind of pleasantly unexpected and somewhat unhinged endings, but in nearly every other way, they are complete opposites, particularly in matters of the sisterhood, and that’s all i can say about that here.
fargo’s on a roll, and i’m here with my grabby little hands for whatever she’s cooking up next.
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