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Nov 16, 2020slawr084 rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
I think I’m the wrong audience for this book. I went into it expecting a “light read”—the cover and title suggested a cutesy, light-hearted novel about a fearful person who eventually comes out of her shell, or some such thing. I expected at least a light tone to compliment the silly antics Agatha gets up to. Instead, the whole thing starts out depressingly abysmal and maintains that feeling for far too long. It isn’t until the very end of the story that she begins to remind me of a cranky Bridget Jones, and by then it feels like too little, too late. Agatha comes across as an unsympathetic, unrelatable caricature of a NIMBY-ist “Karen”. She feels entitled, has no friends, alienates anyone who tries to get close to her, and her online moms group barely tolerates her. She even has a difficult relationship with the teddy bear in which she confides (no joke). She is a WASP who actively trolls the other WASPs in her world. She refers to most people in her life by debasing nicknames she created, such as The Interloper and Shrinky-dink, rather than their actual names—evidence of yet another way that she deliberately keeps people at a distance. At times, the text suggests that she is so vengeful and vindictive because her husband cheated on her with (and left her for) the dog-walker—a send-up of the “jilted ex” trope, no doubt—but at other moments it is very clear that she has long been cynical, abrasive, and hostile to everyone around her. The only people she does not seem to alienate are her own kids, and there are moments when even this is no longer a certainty. All of this, in addition to her single-minded self-absorption, makes it hard for the reader (well, for ME, at least) to feel invested in her character. I’m not trying to say the book is objectively bad, as there is certainly the right audience for it out there. Perhaps the book is supposed to feel like a vicarious revenge fantasy for jilted spouses. I mean, all of this caricaturing has to be deliberate and self-aware, right? Perhaps we’re supposed to wonder whether Agatha is the way she is as a defense mechanism resulting from her multiple irrational fears. Perhaps Agatha is drawn this way to deliberately evoke zero sympathy, although I can’t imagine why this would be the desired effect. I've tried to keep an open mind, but I almost stopped listening altogether when the tired, racist trope of bored-housewife-seduces-“exotic”-black-handyman was introduced. Finally, I’m sooooo not into the way much of this book’s interactions take place in an electronic/online environment. I’m technically a millennial so I probably shouldn’t mind this, but I find that style so jarring and not at all engaging. I suppose I should say some nice things, too. I finished the book, so I guess that’s something. Also, I’m amused by Agatha's made-up cuss words. As a character, Agatha started to become interesting to me when I noticed how dissonant her intense fear of so many ordinary, everyday things seemed in contrast to the nonsensical, dangerous, and illegal things she was so driven to do. I was so busy hating her that it took me a while to pick up on this. I also appreciated the few moments when she became almost-vulnerable by tentatively showing legitimate interest in others, thereby approaching the making of real human connections. There, that was 4 nice things. So yeah, I am the wrong audience for this book.