subtextual
saw the tl talking about jagvi and her packer so i put this on hold at the library without knowing a single thing about it…..well it was kind of like a bad book and a good book had a baby and i read it basically in one sitting. the premise: what if you were possessed by the malevolent eldritch spirit living in your local cave pit and you had to be strapped down by a hot butch (also your brother’s ex girlfriend who you had an antagonistic crush on growing up) to survive it. also, when i saw blurbs from yael van der wouden AND tamsyn muir on the back cover i was like my god……they’re all oomfs with each other.
the book: i liked it, mostly. the small town folk horror atmosphere freaked me out at times, the venom-style Capitalization of Monster Inner Dialogue never fails to unsettle me, i do love it when authors play with form! i was eating up angelina/jagvi toxic butchfemme yuri AND angelina/patrick/jagvi triangulation so hard…..having weird unexplained and embarrassing teenage feelings towards your older brother’s girlfriend and then catching her in the taboo act and ruining her life and driving her out of the town only for fate to keep colliding you all back together in the same cesspool hometown, only this time it’s worse because you’re adults so you’re exponentially more practiced in hurting each other ISSSSSSS the most classic and beloved trope guaranteed to snipe me in the brain instantly….i say this while not being able to cite another example off the top of my head but trust me. the weird family and small town dynamics were strangely wholesome despite the undercurrents of homophobia and racism, i guess to show that jagvi was an outsider among outsiders but i was really just questioning the sociopolitics of the siccos and their position as the Big Family of cadenze despite only having like 10-20 members total. like is that not a regular family size. maybe not in this san fransokyo style crossover between italian village and remote appalachian town…..
my issue is that it’s really unsatisfying to me when the horror aspect of queer horror is entirely only an allegory for the consequences of repression/denial of wants & desires/being trapped in your small podunk town, with no real dedication to the canon in-universe mythos of the evil, like “the real monster was homophobia/racism/[insert oppression] all along” is NOT enough for me…..when the monster revealed that it was after jagvi all along instead of angelina because jagvi’s life had so much more potential now that she had chosen to leave cadenze, basically mirroring what had been said in text about how “this town swallows up options” literally in the first couple of pages…..like that’s it? monster lurking underneath the veneer of peace in a small town is another super classic trope that you really have to dress up to make interesting, otherwise the lampshading becomes too painfully obvious to ignore. i did like the last chapter about the future, i found it cathartic that they had begun to make peace with their small lives in cadenze but sad that they never made it out after everything….really good and dreamlike.
my other more minor issue is that i found some of the writing around cadenze and the sicco family to be kind of clunky, there was a lot of telegraphing with the exposition and foreshadowing. the reveal about angelina’s father jumpscared me for real though…..i wish the authors had committed more to the horror because i was fully expecting some serious dead dove gory body snatching gay sex but the body horror only happened for like 2 pages at the end and it wasn’t even sexy *smashes phone* they should’ve monsterfucked in da pitt. otherwise what was even the point.
“You and I have always been very simpatico like that,” Angelina said. Jagvi laughed. That old teenage thrill ran down Angelina’s back; she was used to ignoring it by now. She didn’t want to impress Jagvi anymore, but sometimes her body forgot.
- ha.....a classic
If you threw something into the pit at the back of their cave, you could wait forever and never hear it land. Patrick had a similar pit inside himself, and it was where he kept his love for Jagvi. No matter how many times she messed up, Patrick never stopped forgiving her.
- the triangulation with the straight brother was good, i liked that jagvi had multiple people in her corner even if she didn't realize it, and it wasn't sibling romantic rivalry so much as three corners touching each other because they continued to love each other
Jagvi could tell when Angelina was coming, these days. It felt like fear, or some panicky instinct of danger, the way animals raise their noses to the wind and scatter, or when a phone rings and the pulsing in your gut tells you it’s bad news. Except along with the prickle of sweat breaking out on Jagvi’s lower back and the way her heartbeat amped up, it also made her mouth go wet. Made her palm herself, curl her knuckles over her crotch, ready and hungry for her monster.
saw the tl talking about jagvi and her packer so i put this on hold at the library without knowing a single thing about it…..well it was kind of like a bad book and a good book had a baby and i read it basically in one sitting. the premise: what if you were possessed by the malevolent eldritch spirit living in your local cave pit and you had to be strapped down by a hot butch (also your brother’s ex girlfriend who you had an antagonistic crush on growing up) to survive it. also, when i saw blurbs from yael van der wouden AND tamsyn muir on the back cover i was like my god……they’re all oomfs with each other.
the book: i liked it, mostly. the small town folk horror atmosphere freaked me out at times, the venom-style Capitalization of Monster Inner Dialogue never fails to unsettle me, i do love it when authors play with form! i was eating up angelina/jagvi toxic butchfemme yuri AND angelina/patrick/jagvi triangulation so hard…..having weird unexplained and embarrassing teenage feelings towards your older brother’s girlfriend and then catching her in the taboo act and ruining her life and driving her out of the town only for fate to keep colliding you all back together in the same cesspool hometown, only this time it’s worse because you’re adults so you’re exponentially more practiced in hurting each other ISSSSSSS the most classic and beloved trope guaranteed to snipe me in the brain instantly….i say this while not being able to cite another example off the top of my head but trust me. the weird family and small town dynamics were strangely wholesome despite the undercurrents of homophobia and racism, i guess to show that jagvi was an outsider among outsiders but i was really just questioning the sociopolitics of the siccos and their position as the Big Family of cadenze despite only having like 10-20 members total. like is that not a regular family size. maybe not in this san fransokyo style crossover between italian village and remote appalachian town…..
my issue is that it’s really unsatisfying to me when the horror aspect of queer horror is entirely only an allegory for the consequences of repression/denial of wants & desires/being trapped in your small podunk town, with no real dedication to the canon in-universe mythos of the evil, like “the real monster was homophobia/racism/[insert oppression] all along” is NOT enough for me…..when the monster revealed that it was after jagvi all along instead of angelina because jagvi’s life had so much more potential now that she had chosen to leave cadenze, basically mirroring what had been said in text about how “this town swallows up options” literally in the first couple of pages…..like that’s it? monster lurking underneath the veneer of peace in a small town is another super classic trope that you really have to dress up to make interesting, otherwise the lampshading becomes too painfully obvious to ignore. i did like the last chapter about the future, i found it cathartic that they had begun to make peace with their small lives in cadenze but sad that they never made it out after everything….really good and dreamlike.
my other more minor issue is that i found some of the writing around cadenze and the sicco family to be kind of clunky, there was a lot of telegraphing with the exposition and foreshadowing. the reveal about angelina’s father jumpscared me for real though…..i wish the authors had committed more to the horror because i was fully expecting some serious dead dove gory body snatching gay sex but the body horror only happened for like 2 pages at the end and it wasn’t even sexy *smashes phone* they should’ve monsterfucked in da pitt. otherwise what was even the point.
“You and I have always been very simpatico like that,” Angelina said. Jagvi laughed. That old teenage thrill ran down Angelina’s back; she was used to ignoring it by now. She didn’t want to impress Jagvi anymore, but sometimes her body forgot.
- ha.....a classic
If you threw something into the pit at the back of their cave, you could wait forever and never hear it land. Patrick had a similar pit inside himself, and it was where he kept his love for Jagvi. No matter how many times she messed up, Patrick never stopped forgiving her.
- the triangulation with the straight brother was good, i liked that jagvi had multiple people in her corner even if she didn't realize it, and it wasn't sibling romantic rivalry so much as three corners touching each other because they continued to love each other
Jagvi could tell when Angelina was coming, these days. It felt like fear, or some panicky instinct of danger, the way animals raise their noses to the wind and scatter, or when a phone rings and the pulsing in your gut tells you it’s bad news. Except along with the prickle of sweat breaking out on Jagvi’s lower back and the way her heartbeat amped up, it also made her mouth go wet. Made her palm herself, curl her knuckles over her crotch, ready and hungry for her monster.