something about this book just rubbed me the wrong way. a big part of that was definitely the way disability was talked about/used almost like a horror element in parts....it feels like it's supposed to show the reality of life as a woman with chronic pain, but it just ended up pushing cure rhetoric and framing disabled people as crabby old hags with "dead legs" who are resented by their former loved ones

until they are cured and "back to normal" for the happy ending

 

I am literally begging authors to stop using the magically disabled and tragically disabled tropes in their books. it really shouldn't be this hard.

I also felt like Awad was trying to have an unreliable narrator but made her so unreliable that half of the story was lost. we only needed one sentence from a onlooker's pov to make the entire book make sense, but we didn't get that. instead, we got a bizarre ableist fever dream without any clear messaging. wild.