The Female of the Species

Tsundoku reviewed Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

About Justice, Vigilante or otherwise

5 stars

Content warning Sexual Violence, Pedophilia, Regular Violence and Gore, animal cruelty, the horrors of a small town, and death; my review contains spoilers

Whether or not you think Alex Craft deserves to die for what she has done, she HAS to for the sake of the book.

You know from the jacket copy that Alex Craft is a killer.

Specifically she horrifically murders a man because he raped and murdered her older sister, and there wasn't enough evidence to charge him even though everyone in the town knew he did it.

There are other problems. The Tweekers in the woods who roofie one of the viewpoint characters and very much intend to rape her.

The Child Molesting Uncle that people won't keep away from their family, won't publicly condemn.

It's the sins of the small town that won't condemn people. That will report to animal control a sack of puppies, but not actually report that they were dead.

Alex takes care of all of these (except the animal abusers). You could argue her only problem with the tweekers is that she didn't kill them until the end of the book and that's what undoes her.

Alex sets a man on fire, but to be clear, if you are paying any attention to the story: Alex can feel emotions. She feels TOO MUCH of them. She's loaded with empathy. Alex is both the girl who cradles baby kittens and the girl who rips a man's face apart for trying to rape her friend.

She knows she can't be normal, like everyone else.

And I think that hurts.

There's a character, Branley who gets a lot of shit for acting like a promiscuous teenage girl. But Alex realizes there's more to her than that. At one point, during Branley's breakup with her more than friend Jack, she admits she does this because she feels she has nothing more to her than her looks and she knows those will fade. She is redeemed, though you could argue it's her "fault" that Alex dies and I don't think that's fair. She's the victim of another near-assault, and the point is she is in love with a boy and doesn't know how to let him go.

I love this book and wish it got the attention it deserved.

Remy reviewed The female of the species by Mindy McGinnis

Review of 'The female of the species' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

those who say this book is a bad take on rape culture probably didn’t fully understand the message, imo. if you go on just those reviews alone and pass up this read, you’re missing a lot. it isn’t here to hold your hand and tell you “this is bad” because you should know it already. it’s here to tell you a story about how and why we don’t take this shit seriously, and how and why we’re willing to just be complacent for the sake of politeness and avoiding “drama”.

this book was...a lot. don’t read it if you’re triggered by rape or assault or anything else. just don’t, unless you want that heartache. it gets very real, very fast, and i get if that’s why people think it’s unrealistic (except it is. they’re all peekay, thinking they’d do something in the crisis, but being her when they’re comforted just …

those who say this book is a bad take on rape culture probably didn’t fully understand the message, imo. if you go on just those reviews alone and pass up this read, you’re missing a lot. it isn’t here to hold your hand and tell you “this is bad” because you should know it already. it’s here to tell you a story about how and why we don’t take this shit seriously, and how and why we’re willing to just be complacent for the sake of politeness and avoiding “drama”.

this book was...a lot. don’t read it if you’re triggered by rape or assault or anything else. just don’t, unless you want that heartache. it gets very real, very fast, and i get if that’s why people think it’s unrealistic (except it is. they’re all peekay, thinking they’d do something in the crisis, but being her when they’re comforted just by imagining violence instead of doing anything). i’d say complaints about lack of realism probably haven’t experienced this story exactly as it’s written out, because the underlying themes and “day to day” expressions happen daily, under our noses, and we’re all too willing to turn away from it and make anyone willing to take matters into their own hands a pariah just to make ourselves feel better.

or maybe we fancy ourselves alex and agree that we’d do the same thing, when we never actually would do something so “horrible” like resorting to violence or extrajudicial means of exacting justice. maybe we fancy ourselves alex because like peekay, imagining what we’d do in a situation is enough to quell our anger about it.

this book is going to stick with me a long time. i see myself in alex, almost too much. i’m going to miss her a lot and i wish more characters appreciated her before she died.

and she’s right—laws don’t control us. we control us. laws just say what the punishments are if we’re caught.

the proof of that is in our daily lives.

meeg reviewed Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

Review of 'Female of the Species' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Wowee this book was dark. Gotta say I much prefer "Girl Made of Stars" to "The Female of the Species" if I'm going to read a book about the aftermath of working through rape and sexual assault, especially one marketed to teens.

The Female of the Species

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