Brass Book

Raw and unforgiving, the writing is strong and pulls you in. I thought Millie was one of the more engaging protagonists I've come across in a while, but ultimately two things bother me about this book and make me want to give it more of a 3 and 1/2 star rating:

01. The lack of reason behind her outlandish behavior. Everything she did was so extreme, I was expecting a big revelation about her past or her family. What we got was less meaningful than I had expected. And if her actions weren't influenced by an outside source, I'd like to have seen her acknowledge and work towards fixing whatever inside of her that was broken.

02. The rape scene. Millie does, without a doubt, rape a young and drugged/drunk girl but never actually acknowledges this. Millie herself was fucked out of her mind but it doesn't excuse it, and it doesn't excuse the author for never coming back to that and leaving it as just another of her sexual escapades, which it was not. This is really irresponsible writing, and I'm not sure the author even realized how horrible this event was.

But as a reader, I can't help but force myself to ignore these weaknesses, because the book as a whole was engrossing, unyielding, and dynamic. And I felt the relationship between Jamie and Millie was one of the strongest written relationships I've read in a while.