TW: Child sexual abuse; incest; sexual assault; racism; misogyny; victim-blaming.

WOW, this book was awful. Narrative passages about nothing clutter several books lately. Have them -be- about something, not just a character Thinking Deep Thoughts of uselessness! This was stuffed full of characters -ruminating- and -brooding- and there was NO emotion behind it. I wonder if it was there to pad word count or something. Even the passages where I am clearly meant to feel something inspired boredom and irritation. The little chapter intros were not as cute or clever as the author wanted them to be. They were meant to emulate, I think, announcements in society pages or school papers. It didn't work. Not only is this multiple POVs written with the exact same voice minus word choices, this flips between timelines of forty years or more for no reason and I couldn't stand it. It was so hard to follow! Laney is a Southern gal stereotype, and most of the time I wished she'd shut up. The author made her too much of a stereotype, is why. Betts needed to be cut entirely. She added nothing, although I found out what a zhaleika was and that's interesting. I watched a clip on youtube. Mia was probably there to balance out the sadness and deep issues of everyone else's stories, and it kind of worked. None of these women had any real character once they got older. Their characterization was barely there to begin with.

They're called the four Ms Bradwells because a professor they had thought he was being clever. He called one Ms Bradwell a drug dealer and I raised my eyebrows. If I hadn't had professors who had been as proud of using shock value as he was, I would have been aghast. But no, some professors absolutely do this. It's inappropriate. Stop. One student is proficient in Latin due to practicing a branch of Catholicism that uses it a lot, and the professor is delighted. The others struggle and a nonsensical phrase emerges that they still use thirty years later. It's--a thing--but it comes off as odd and annoying. The book insists it takes place in 2011, but for all intents and purposes, takes place thirty years earlier, when they're all in their twenties and the horrible stuff is happening. As far as 2011, there's a brief mention of a blog. We never get to see the blog. Not a single entry, just a mention. There's no references to 2011 technology, societal messages, or thought patterns. This is solidly early 1980s, late 70s. Sooo much of the book could have been cut and just focused on that. The rest was just padding. No characterization, no action, no connection between the timelines, just padding.

This was a poorly done character study, not a thriller. I think the reason there's the nonsense about two timelines, with one thirty years into the future, was so all the women could be shown as grown with children the ages they were when the dramatic stuff happened, and how they adjust to it and what they teach their daughters. It's useless. Ginger's mom is a terrible, terrible parent. Most parents would be screaming and plotting murder if their daughter were being sexually assaulted at the age of thirteen by a twenty-year-old, and a family member at that. Ginger's mom just whispers and stares at the friend who told her. Then, she...writes a poem and sticks it in a poetry book...for her daughter to find after she dies. CUT THE MELODRAMA, YOU ASSHOLE. I'd yell at her to protect her kid but...child abuse and sexual assault weren't crimes until the 1970s. There's realistically not a lot that would have been done. The acts are seen as crimes now, but it's still really recent and it's a huge part of why people blame victims and especially brush child sexual assault by family members under the rug. Or joke about it. It's become a joke since the 90s I think. So, back in the 70s, "seduction at thirteen by a cousin" would have been...seen as exactly that, as opposed to "he groomed her for sexual assault". It's still awful all around, and I desperately wish things had been different for Ginger.

This trope always goes one of two ways: survivor becomes withdrawn, dislikes everyone and lots of "cry for help" stuff, which I've never seen portrayed realistically in books outside of "Speak." Or, survivor becomes promiscuous, rebellious, and someone everyone blames and makes fun of. It's never realistic, there's no nuance, and do these authors ever -speak- to survivors? Ugh. Ginger becomes the second one. The phrase "gawky slut" is used in reference to her by someone who's supposed to be her friend. Her cousin assaulted her over a period of years, and she...became a rebel because he wasn't in love with her? WHAT?! You're gawky unless someone falls in love with you?! WHAT THE FUCK. This makes no sense! The "Ginger is a gawky slut" friend later reveals Ginger's rapist is also her rapist. He called her a racist slur and a misogynist slur as well, while assaulting her. Ginger argues, years later when they're adults, that Trey couldn't have raped or been racist to her friend because...he was assaulting -her- all along so blahblah stupid. I HATE THOUGHT PROCESSES LIKE THIS.

Ginger keeps referring to the period of seven years where her cousin repeatedly assaulted and groomed her as "an affair." NO NO NO. Again, counseling for this wouldn't have been around then really. This...is realistic to the 1970s. So have the book take place maaaybe in the 1990s if you want them to reflect reasonably! Mental health services and methods haven't really changed since the 1960s in America. The 1990s had particular types of misogyny still, that could have been an interesting social commentary when compared to the 1970s. The author missed that opportunity and so many others. Trey, her assailant, kills himself later and--each woman flaps her jaws about this, but has no emotion about it. The attitude is "ooh, suicide, let's be both surprised and horribly fascinated by it as well." UGH. I've known people whose assailants died, and their emotions and reflections on it -that they felt comfortable sharing with others- do not reflect what this book said at all. There's a wide variety of emotions and circumstances, and this book did -nothing-. And there were weird journalists? There was no foreshadowing or reason, and no--it felt randomly placed to stretch out the story. It wasn't done well at all.

Whyyyy did Ginger strip down naked on the boat at the end? Why did the book end on that note? Was it poorly done symbolism? Was it an act of rebellion to end the book? What? Ugh. Before I forget: a black pearl necklace was repeatedly referred to in the book. Why does the cover have a double strand of white pearls?.

Trey, the assailant, was nothing but a wind-up rape machine. The author made him a cartoon villain and little more than set dressing. He wasn't even a plot device, that's how poorly this book was written. If the audience wasn't upset that he raped a child, and one he was related to, they would surely be upset that he raped a woman in a way that's seen as unusually degrading, while using racist and misogynist slurs! Be angry, readers! BEEEEEE ANNNNNGRRRYYYY IT'S MYYYY BOOK AND I SHALL CHAAAANNNNELLLLL EMOOOOTIONNSSS FROM YOUUUUU. In response to what the author was doing, I think of Smosh's catchphrase, "SHUT. UP.!"

Books that do a much better job examining sexual assault that actually -have- the rapist in them, thus drawing emotion from the audience and are plot, not set dressing, are "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson. "Speak" has the survivor who is withdrawn, and does -excellent- with the portrayal. "Luckiest Girl Alive" by Jessica Knoll has the promiscuous rebel survivor. Please read those and skip this one. ( )

Wanted to like it even more. There's a lot here for women to think about but it is slow developing and perhaps too many of the cliches of womens literature for me. ( )

Wanted to like it even more. There's a lot here for women to think about but it is slow developing and perhaps too many of the cliches of womens literature for me. ( )

Four women lawyers! Squeee! I definitely want to read this book, and I'm crossing my fingers that it lives up to my expectations.
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So unfortunately, I got positively buried at work while in the middle of this, and as a result never got completely immersed. However, I think it was a bad choice for the author to give multiple names/nicknames to each of the four main characters -- it made it much harder to keep track of who was who. For instance, Mary Ellen = Mia, while Helen = Laney, and Elsbieta = Betts. THEN each of the four ALSO has a "Ms. Bradwell" nickname (Ms. Decisis-Bradwell, Ms. Drug-Lord-Bradwell, etc.), which are just too long to have worked as nicknames in real life. Have you ever known someone with a multi-word, multi-syllable, not-catchy-or-rhyming nickname? I haven't. I think you can get away with calling a group "The Ms Bradwells", sure, but having individual Bradwell-related nickname is just a conceit that I would have expected to end up on the publishing house floor (or whatever the literary equivalent is of a cutting room floor in film).

It's kindof a small point, but I really think it hampered my ability to stop trying to figure out which girl was which, and just relate without thinking too hard about it.

Ultimately the plot was pretty good; there's a little mystery at the heart of it that kept me guessing all the way through. I just wish I'd ended up liking even one of the characters enough to... well, to care what happened to her by the end of the novel. But I didn't, not really. I mean, I didn't hate any of them, but they all just left me feeling pretty meh. Which is surprising, because generally I can't get enough of smart, opinionated, accomplished women.

To be frank, maybe the overt feminism (much as I support it) was part of the problem -- any time a book gets too preachy, whether for conservative or liberal ideals, I think it necessarily sacrifices some of the characters' likeability and alienates the [fiction] reader by pulling you out of the story and into the real world, where you think about what the author was trying to get you think, exactly. ( )

I was really excited when the library emailed me letting me know that this book was available to be checked out. I was really looking forward to reading this book almost to the point where I was considering purchasing the ebook. Sad to say the wait was the best part of this reading experience. I guess I can't really say I read this book because I stopped reading at page 52 (ebook on the iPad). I love to read and this book was just too confusing. It was difficult to figure out which of the 4 main characters in the book I was reading about. I feel that reading is supposed to be relaxing not work. I am so glad that this was a library rental and not a purchase. ( )