Patricia Wants to Cuddle
Jun. 19th, 2023 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amado1I finished Patricia Wants to Cuddle last night and I have some thoughts!
The premise is great: the final four contestants on a Bachelor-style reality TV show go to a remote PNW island to film some of their last episodes together. While there, they're picked off one-by-one in gruesome ways by a female Sasquatch who haunts the island ... and is desperate for love.
This is a book I wholeheartedly recommend ... that premise is golden, and it definitely lives up to it. But at the same time, it's a difficult book to rate! I think I would give it an honest 3/5 stars, but on Goodreads, I upped it to 4/5, just because I want other people to read it so badly.
The cons:
Our main character Renee spends the first half of the book being the least interesting person onscreen. Let me do a run-down of the characters so you see what I mean:
Renee: maaaybe bisexual, she's not sure, and not interested in winning The Catch. She's guaranteed a spot in the Final Two because she's Black and it's good optics, so she doesn't have to try, and she just wants to coast through these next few weeks until she's eliminated.
(BORING AF)
Vanessa: She's this season's villain and she knows it, but by God, she's going to be the winner too. Ruthless and cutting, Vanessa especially enjoys provoking Lilah-Mae, but has surprising moments of vulnerability and is a good friend to Amanda, and genuinely in love with The Catch, Jeremy. Vanessa recently had an abortion and is gutted when this becomes common knowledge. Late in the book, we learn that Vanessa has no real animosity for Lilah-Mae, and only manufactured a rivalry for the cameras; in fact, she assumed Lilah-Mae knew this and was simply playing along.
Amanda: Everyone thinks Amanda is a ditzy Instagram influencer, but she's actually a viciously savvy businesswoman. Even Renee -- or especially Renee -- sees Amanda as a simple, virginal airhead who's obsessed with Instagram. No one but the producers know that Amanda is making a fortune off this show through smart marketing, or that she's secretly been sleeping with Jeremy, and is in fact the most likely winner of the show. Unlike Vanessa, Amanda has no affection for Jeremy and is simply using this show to expand her career.
Lilah-Mae: A conservative Christian influencer, Lilah-Mae isn't interested in Jeremy either. She puts on a false smile and a faux-sweet "Woww!!" tone whenever he tells her he cares so so so much about his faith, but she isn't fooled, and she doesn't care. Lilah-Mae is using The Catch to spread the gospel; she's desperate to make this work so she can reach as many sinners as possible. Lilah-Mae has a sinful past of her own, including a childhood of beauty pageants and a stint at Hooters when she was in college, and she's the one who publicly reveals Vanessa's abortion.
There's a lot more to say about ALL these characters than there is about Renee. For the first half of the book, this is all Renee is: the flat, undeveloped side character, forgotten by her castmates and ... honestly, by the reader as well. With nothing to do, no motivation, and no agency, Renee fades quickly into the background.
Here's the thing: I adore Renee. In the second half of the book, she undergoes a transformation that makes her wildly, wickedly fun. Calm in a crisis, blase about her castmates' gruesome deaths, shamelessly enamored with the island and Patricia, 2nd Half Renee is wonderful. But there's absolutely no connection between 2nd Half Renee and 1st Half Renee. They're not the same person. A lot of hard work needs to be done to turn one into the other, and that work just isn't there. It's like the first kill happens and the author suddenly remembers to flip the switch and turn Renee's personality on.
A related issue: there are grimace-inducing moments of "white liberal author syndrome" throughout the book, although honestly, they're very mild. Comparatively speaking. One that really stands out to me is Renee's motivation for joining "The Catch."
She...doesn't have one...
Instead, we learn that Renee's white coworkers nominated her for the show out of a sense of misplaced white guilt. Huh?? But why did she audition? Why did she go through the hard work to join this show AFTER being nominated? And there are LOTS of white coworkers out there who PROBABLY feel a sense of misplaced white guilt toward their Black coworkers .... but they don't nominate them for The Bachelor!
My roommate suggested a fun way to fix it: What if Renee feels a lot of tension/awkwardness with her white coworkers, so one day, she tells a little white lie in order to fit in. She pretends to loooove "The Catch." Does she love "The Catch"? No. But her white coworkers do, and when Renee says, "Hey, I love that show!" suddenly they light up and the tension dissipates a little. But it's a double-edged sword. Now Renee finds herself trapped in awkward conversations about who's going to win this season, and do you really think the Catch this year is THAT rich? Now she's getting invited to Doris' Saturday watch parties and asked to bring a cheese tray. When her coworkers surprise her with a nomination, Renee goes helplessly along with it, expecting to be cut ... but the network desperately needs more Black contestants after last season's media fiasco, so Renee is horrified to find herself approved. She's officially on the show.
None of this happens in the book, but it fits Renee's character, it works well with her 2nd Half themes, and it would make her a lot more interesting and less flat. Alternately, during an awkward mandatory DEI meeting, when asked about her hobbies, Renee could deadpan that she's a Catch fan -- thinking it's an obvious joke, because of the show's racist history. But her coworkers take it seriously and love the answer, and now they're actually starting conversations with her, and well, guess she's a Catch fan now.
OK, one more criticism, and then I'll praise the good stuff briefly:
Sometimes, characters do shitty things, and you know that you, the reader, are supposed to think they're shitty. Other times, characters do shitty things, and you get an uncomfortable feeling the the author expects you to laugh, relate to it, or cheer the character on. This is how I felt with two side characters, Casey and Mike.
The producer, Casey, is our POV character for all scenes with Mike. What we see from Mike, through his actions, are that he's quiet, thoughtful, gentle, and shaken by an early sighting of Patricia, which no one but him sees. What we know about Mike, from Casey's thoughts, are that he's sexy but very stupid. This stupidity is constantly remarked upon but never shown. Mike is vacant, empty-headed, blissfully free of thoughts -- says Casey, his boss, who's sleeping with him. But those arms! That hair! What a sexy, stupid piece of ass! Mike's also down-to-earth, he doesn't have delusions of grandeur from working on The Catch, and he's quietly competent, but mostly, what the author wants us to know is that he's stupid.
I am maybe taking this too harshly because it's a big pet peeve of mine IRL -- I really don't like when people shit on others for being "stupid." It's been my biggest pet peeve since I was a little kid. Growing up I was the "smartest" kid in school and my best friend was the "dumbest" kid in school, and I think that's a large element of it -- but also watching kids with Down's Syndrome get bullied at school, or listening to adults call people "stupid" because of easily-explainable mistakes or misunderstandings -- lots of stuff. It makes me judge the book extra-hard for this unchecked shittiness on Casey's part.
It's different for other characters -- Renee, Vanessa, and Lilah-Mae all think Amanda is stupid too. But the narrative explicitly checks them by telling us how Amanda is working this show to her advantage -- in fact, Amanda is probably going to beat them all. Before the killing starts. But with Mike, there's no such check. Instead, Mike dies checking on the dead body of a coworker, and after the killing spree stops, the murders are all blamed on gentle, kind Mike as part of a mass murder-suicide. Internet sleuths assume that Mike was jilted by Casey and went postal, "and it's always the nice ones!"
This smarts especially because a late-in-the-novel surname-drop reveals that Mike is Chinese-American, making him one of only three characters of color in the book. Among those three, only Mike and Renee get any significant screentime. If the author was trying to subvert stereotypes by making the Asian guy stupid and hunky instead of nerdy and slim, she should have let us know that he was Asian before she hit the last 10 pages of the book.
Okay, okay, I've bullied this book enough, because it really is worth the read. I love the title, the premise, the cover, the plot. I enjoyed all the characters, from alcoholic Catch host Dex Derickson to Patricia herself. The concept of an ancient monkey-babe who just wants companionship -- the idea of a remote island filled with lesbians who are drawn to Patricia and see themselves in her -- fuck, I love that! Renee's lonely position as a closeted bisexual and the sole Black woman on The Catch, a show revolving around straight, white, wealthy love, really WORKED. When the killing starts, there's a scene where Renee and Jeremy go looking for Amanda, the first victim. Renee is brave enough to approach Patricia's cave. She sees a pile of remains, some fresh and some ancient: decades-old hiking boots, rusted carabiners, human femurs. Nearby is Amanda's severed head. But when Renee goes calmly back to Jeremy, and he asks her if she's seen anything, she just says, "Nah."
I fucking love it.
I was never bored with this book -- it's a fast read, and it's interspersed with a variety of genres that make it extra fun. You have the behind-the-scenes drama of four finalists on The Catch. You have the horror/mystery/slasher vibes of Patricia stalking the models one by one. You have logs from CatchChat.com, where exposition is delivered in the form of a pseudo-Reddit forum. You have 2004-era blog posts from a young woman whose sister went missing on Otters Island ... in searching for her sister, Katie finds Patricia instead. And you have high school love letters from two lesbians in Arkansas who eventually ran away to Otters Island, met Patricia, and grew old together. One of these women, Maggie, plays a significant role in the book. Katie, the blogger, makes a cameo appearance during Mike's death scene.
As for Patricia: look, when Renee watches Patricia viciously stomp Jeremy to death, and then Renee moves forward and slowly, tenderly bandages Patricia's wounds and strokes her face, thinking of how sad and lonely Patricia must be... YES YES YES YES. I adore Creature From the Black Lagoon, and really, this is Creature, but with a happy ending for the monster, who also happens to be a lesbian this time.
(I say, as if the Gill-man isn't also a lesbian, in vibes)
Read it! Read it read it read it. That is all.
The premise is great: the final four contestants on a Bachelor-style reality TV show go to a remote PNW island to film some of their last episodes together. While there, they're picked off one-by-one in gruesome ways by a female Sasquatch who haunts the island ... and is desperate for love.
This is a book I wholeheartedly recommend ... that premise is golden, and it definitely lives up to it. But at the same time, it's a difficult book to rate! I think I would give it an honest 3/5 stars, but on Goodreads, I upped it to 4/5, just because I want other people to read it so badly.
The cons:
Our main character Renee spends the first half of the book being the least interesting person onscreen. Let me do a run-down of the characters so you see what I mean:
Renee: maaaybe bisexual, she's not sure, and not interested in winning The Catch. She's guaranteed a spot in the Final Two because she's Black and it's good optics, so she doesn't have to try, and she just wants to coast through these next few weeks until she's eliminated.
(BORING AF)
Vanessa: She's this season's villain and she knows it, but by God, she's going to be the winner too. Ruthless and cutting, Vanessa especially enjoys provoking Lilah-Mae, but has surprising moments of vulnerability and is a good friend to Amanda, and genuinely in love with The Catch, Jeremy. Vanessa recently had an abortion and is gutted when this becomes common knowledge. Late in the book, we learn that Vanessa has no real animosity for Lilah-Mae, and only manufactured a rivalry for the cameras; in fact, she assumed Lilah-Mae knew this and was simply playing along.
Amanda: Everyone thinks Amanda is a ditzy Instagram influencer, but she's actually a viciously savvy businesswoman. Even Renee -- or especially Renee -- sees Amanda as a simple, virginal airhead who's obsessed with Instagram. No one but the producers know that Amanda is making a fortune off this show through smart marketing, or that she's secretly been sleeping with Jeremy, and is in fact the most likely winner of the show. Unlike Vanessa, Amanda has no affection for Jeremy and is simply using this show to expand her career.
Lilah-Mae: A conservative Christian influencer, Lilah-Mae isn't interested in Jeremy either. She puts on a false smile and a faux-sweet "Woww!!" tone whenever he tells her he cares so so so much about his faith, but she isn't fooled, and she doesn't care. Lilah-Mae is using The Catch to spread the gospel; she's desperate to make this work so she can reach as many sinners as possible. Lilah-Mae has a sinful past of her own, including a childhood of beauty pageants and a stint at Hooters when she was in college, and she's the one who publicly reveals Vanessa's abortion.
There's a lot more to say about ALL these characters than there is about Renee. For the first half of the book, this is all Renee is: the flat, undeveloped side character, forgotten by her castmates and ... honestly, by the reader as well. With nothing to do, no motivation, and no agency, Renee fades quickly into the background.
Here's the thing: I adore Renee. In the second half of the book, she undergoes a transformation that makes her wildly, wickedly fun. Calm in a crisis, blase about her castmates' gruesome deaths, shamelessly enamored with the island and Patricia, 2nd Half Renee is wonderful. But there's absolutely no connection between 2nd Half Renee and 1st Half Renee. They're not the same person. A lot of hard work needs to be done to turn one into the other, and that work just isn't there. It's like the first kill happens and the author suddenly remembers to flip the switch and turn Renee's personality on.
A related issue: there are grimace-inducing moments of "white liberal author syndrome" throughout the book, although honestly, they're very mild. Comparatively speaking. One that really stands out to me is Renee's motivation for joining "The Catch."
She...doesn't have one...
Instead, we learn that Renee's white coworkers nominated her for the show out of a sense of misplaced white guilt. Huh?? But why did she audition? Why did she go through the hard work to join this show AFTER being nominated? And there are LOTS of white coworkers out there who PROBABLY feel a sense of misplaced white guilt toward their Black coworkers .... but they don't nominate them for The Bachelor!
My roommate suggested a fun way to fix it: What if Renee feels a lot of tension/awkwardness with her white coworkers, so one day, she tells a little white lie in order to fit in. She pretends to loooove "The Catch." Does she love "The Catch"? No. But her white coworkers do, and when Renee says, "Hey, I love that show!" suddenly they light up and the tension dissipates a little. But it's a double-edged sword. Now Renee finds herself trapped in awkward conversations about who's going to win this season, and do you really think the Catch this year is THAT rich? Now she's getting invited to Doris' Saturday watch parties and asked to bring a cheese tray. When her coworkers surprise her with a nomination, Renee goes helplessly along with it, expecting to be cut ... but the network desperately needs more Black contestants after last season's media fiasco, so Renee is horrified to find herself approved. She's officially on the show.
None of this happens in the book, but it fits Renee's character, it works well with her 2nd Half themes, and it would make her a lot more interesting and less flat. Alternately, during an awkward mandatory DEI meeting, when asked about her hobbies, Renee could deadpan that she's a Catch fan -- thinking it's an obvious joke, because of the show's racist history. But her coworkers take it seriously and love the answer, and now they're actually starting conversations with her, and well, guess she's a Catch fan now.
OK, one more criticism, and then I'll praise the good stuff briefly:
Sometimes, characters do shitty things, and you know that you, the reader, are supposed to think they're shitty. Other times, characters do shitty things, and you get an uncomfortable feeling the the author expects you to laugh, relate to it, or cheer the character on. This is how I felt with two side characters, Casey and Mike.
The producer, Casey, is our POV character for all scenes with Mike. What we see from Mike, through his actions, are that he's quiet, thoughtful, gentle, and shaken by an early sighting of Patricia, which no one but him sees. What we know about Mike, from Casey's thoughts, are that he's sexy but very stupid. This stupidity is constantly remarked upon but never shown. Mike is vacant, empty-headed, blissfully free of thoughts -- says Casey, his boss, who's sleeping with him. But those arms! That hair! What a sexy, stupid piece of ass! Mike's also down-to-earth, he doesn't have delusions of grandeur from working on The Catch, and he's quietly competent, but mostly, what the author wants us to know is that he's stupid.
I am maybe taking this too harshly because it's a big pet peeve of mine IRL -- I really don't like when people shit on others for being "stupid." It's been my biggest pet peeve since I was a little kid. Growing up I was the "smartest" kid in school and my best friend was the "dumbest" kid in school, and I think that's a large element of it -- but also watching kids with Down's Syndrome get bullied at school, or listening to adults call people "stupid" because of easily-explainable mistakes or misunderstandings -- lots of stuff. It makes me judge the book extra-hard for this unchecked shittiness on Casey's part.
It's different for other characters -- Renee, Vanessa, and Lilah-Mae all think Amanda is stupid too. But the narrative explicitly checks them by telling us how Amanda is working this show to her advantage -- in fact, Amanda is probably going to beat them all. Before the killing starts. But with Mike, there's no such check. Instead, Mike dies checking on the dead body of a coworker, and after the killing spree stops, the murders are all blamed on gentle, kind Mike as part of a mass murder-suicide. Internet sleuths assume that Mike was jilted by Casey and went postal, "and it's always the nice ones!"
This smarts especially because a late-in-the-novel surname-drop reveals that Mike is Chinese-American, making him one of only three characters of color in the book. Among those three, only Mike and Renee get any significant screentime. If the author was trying to subvert stereotypes by making the Asian guy stupid and hunky instead of nerdy and slim, she should have let us know that he was Asian before she hit the last 10 pages of the book.
Okay, okay, I've bullied this book enough, because it really is worth the read. I love the title, the premise, the cover, the plot. I enjoyed all the characters, from alcoholic Catch host Dex Derickson to Patricia herself. The concept of an ancient monkey-babe who just wants companionship -- the idea of a remote island filled with lesbians who are drawn to Patricia and see themselves in her -- fuck, I love that! Renee's lonely position as a closeted bisexual and the sole Black woman on The Catch, a show revolving around straight, white, wealthy love, really WORKED. When the killing starts, there's a scene where Renee and Jeremy go looking for Amanda, the first victim. Renee is brave enough to approach Patricia's cave. She sees a pile of remains, some fresh and some ancient: decades-old hiking boots, rusted carabiners, human femurs. Nearby is Amanda's severed head. But when Renee goes calmly back to Jeremy, and he asks her if she's seen anything, she just says, "Nah."
I fucking love it.
I was never bored with this book -- it's a fast read, and it's interspersed with a variety of genres that make it extra fun. You have the behind-the-scenes drama of four finalists on The Catch. You have the horror/mystery/slasher vibes of Patricia stalking the models one by one. You have logs from CatchChat.com, where exposition is delivered in the form of a pseudo-Reddit forum. You have 2004-era blog posts from a young woman whose sister went missing on Otters Island ... in searching for her sister, Katie finds Patricia instead. And you have high school love letters from two lesbians in Arkansas who eventually ran away to Otters Island, met Patricia, and grew old together. One of these women, Maggie, plays a significant role in the book. Katie, the blogger, makes a cameo appearance during Mike's death scene.
As for Patricia: look, when Renee watches Patricia viciously stomp Jeremy to death, and then Renee moves forward and slowly, tenderly bandages Patricia's wounds and strokes her face, thinking of how sad and lonely Patricia must be... YES YES YES YES. I adore Creature From the Black Lagoon, and really, this is Creature, but with a happy ending for the monster, who also happens to be a lesbian this time.
(I say, as if the Gill-man isn't also a lesbian, in vibes)
Read it! Read it read it read it. That is all.
