A review by kellylayne
One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall

Did not finish book. Stopped at 90%.
I thought the premise and first half of this book was interesting - exploring the mindset of "nice guys" who arent outright violent but still manipulative, but holy sht, the politics of the back half of this book sucked. The author was clearly trying to do a bothsides (or all sides) thing - reflecting how different groups might respond to borderline cases and the disappearance of girls. At first I thought this was interesting, but for some reason she neglected to include the voice of women and/or feminists who care about violence against women but are capable of distinguishing between assault, consensual roleplay and pornography. It was just such a condescending and gross depiction of women and feminists. We either hate all other women, only care about women in the context of true crime, or we think consensual role play and porn are equivalent to violence. The majority of women I know are capable of more nuance -yet the author neglects to represent this voice in her "all-sides" storytelling. At a certain point, it just felt like she was playing right into the stereotypes of women put forth by MRAs and incels and couldnt take it anymore.