andrea's Reviews > Cuckoo

big ups to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for coming through with the audiobook arc with expediency.

this title hits shelves tomorrow, june 11th, 2024.

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i think the issues that i had with this book are possibly mostly me issues.

i do jump at the chance to read anything set in a conversion camp. Camp Damascus by chuck tingle was an exemplary example of everything that i could want in conversion camp horror - actual horrific moments that explored the hatred, fear, and psychotic behavior of those who subject their children to it/support it, really authentic characters, and a bit of fun.

i'm not familiar with felker-martin's work, though i wanted to pick this up because she's trans and with conversion camps regaining popularity in the states, particularly targeting trans people, i was hoping for a great, own-voices perspective of some of the atrocities that are committed by them.

here's where i think this book may not be for me - this book is 90's set and to felker-martin apparently that means fatphobia so fucking rampant that it completely overshadowed the plot of the book for me. the fatphobia is written like someone taking a frying pan to your head. i got to 28% and i can't even begin to count the number of comments about someone's "fat and disgusting" body that were made. and i get it, fatphobia is very real and deserved to be explored, particularly in the 90's era of no-fat, no-cal snackwell's cakes and deifying the heroin chic look of calvin klein models, but i felt like this wasn't representative of the times it was straight up gratuitous and unnecessary.

i also had a weird issue with the sexual nature of this book. the graphic grotesque of body parts for no reason, weird bodily fluid stuff, etc. like. none of these people felt real and the magnification of that just happened through needless description of various body parts. the whole thing just felt edgy. and maybe that's someone's bag, but it's not personally mine.

i am able to say that there was some misgendering (expected, at a conversion camp) and i thought for what i read there was instances of a character being misgendered and within the narrative referring to themselves as the correct pronouns. so i don't think this is a BAD book - i simply didn't get far enough in to formulate an opinion about the plot - but i do think it'll work better for someone that likes much edgier horror than i do.