Oozing privilege made it hard to stomach
I will preface this by saying that i liked Goodman's later books exponentially more than her debut - namely because of the way she handles privilege and intersectionality has changed drastically. In They'll Never Catch Us (my favorite Goodman to date), the focus is on girls as a whole, and how different factors change how their stories are told, how they're treated, how they react, and more. It was a great tool for empathy, especially when we saw one of the main characters wrestling with coming out as queer and one of the side characters responding to the fear differently because she was Black.
Here, the characters are more of a monolith - even the "poor scholarship student" was white and middle class, not quite in that have/have not bracket. And the rich students were very much a caricature of wealth. It was impossible to believe that they would ALL be that snotty and annoying. To the point where I couldn't even focus on the mystery.
Here, the characters are more of a monolith - even the "poor scholarship student" was white and middle class, not quite in that have/have not bracket. And the rich students were very much a caricature of wealth. It was impossible to believe that they would ALL be that snotty and annoying. To the point where I couldn't even focus on the mystery.