Review: Wayward Son (Cat murder, problematic writing, &; a well-deserved DNF)
After the bi-erasure extravaganza that was Carry On, I really tried to give Wayward Son a chance.
I actually liked the romance between Simon and Baz in the first book and Baz is my absolute favorite character which is so rare for me. I almost never like main characters the best out of books. I generally gravitate toward side characters, but Rowell makes Penny and Agatha so unlikable (and she kills off Ebb) that I had to like either Simon or Baz and since Baz is sort of awesome, I chose him.
Reading the second book was a mistake. There’s a scene about 2 hours in where Baz kills 9 cats and I had to DNF there. I cannot stand cat murder in books, it’s one of my biggest triggers because my parents used to torture me with it when they were abusing me as a child and I wish I could say I’m surprised RR included it, but I’m not.
I genuinely don’t understand how people even still like her books after all of her problematic storytelling. From Eleanor and Park to Carry On, she’s erasing culture and sexuality and she’s taking up space that would be better suited to own voices authors.
And it’s not like the book was even that good prior to the cat murdering scene, everyone was really whiny and I was trying really hard to get into it, but honestly I couldn’t do it.
I hate DNFing stuff and usually I would post a review without a star rating if I DNF’d something because that’s just common courtesy, but this 1-star was well-deserved.
It’s 2019, it’s time to stop this crap