Women

Book received from Netgalley for an honest review

This is a woman’s journey of falling in love with a woman for the first time and how their relationship plays out. It’s written from the first-person point of view giving only the writer’s feelings, actions and experience. There is no direct dialogue and I don’t think I ever found out the writer’s name. I didn’t find it a difficult style to read, which was greatly helped by the book being quite short, but I did feel distanced from main character and her emotions. This is an excerpt of pretty much how the whole novella was written:

“I never knew her birth name. She would not reveal this. She’d changed it to Finn when she was twenty-two, long before I met her. She liked drinking Salty Dogs and champagne and dark beers. She was nineteen years older than I was and called me ‘champ’. She wore men’s clothes, usually from high-end shops and she wore her jeans slung low.”

There is little to no insight into Finn’s motivations but we do know that she is in a 10-year relationship which the writer was reluctant to admit. There are other characters that the writer befriends and her relationships with them are haphazard and often odd but very interesting. I think that in some ways the way it is written made it much easier for me to read than if I had become emotionally involved. I think the emotional turmoil the writer goes through would have been devastating if I was more invested.

“Women” does not fall into the romance genre which is my current comfort zone. In spite of the emotional distancing I enjoyed the prose and the story. I would not, however, recommend this to someone wanting neat bows or happy endings. 
3.5 stars rounded up.

A young girl moves to the big smoke, and after having exclusively dated men up until that point in her life, then gets involved with an older attached woman, who seemingly bewitches her to the point of craziness.
A self-confessed addict, the girl seems driven by getting her fix of whatever it is that is currently floating her boat - sex, drugs, alcohol, or just good old drama. From stalking her love across social media, to trying to scratch the itch with other people, this is a car crash of a relationship. The fact it's with a woman doesn't actually make much difference, as the protagonist's behaviours could be directed towards any potential paramour.
What I loved about this book was the characters, who display a wealth of both good and bad human traits as the story progresses - vanity, narcissism, obsession, jealousy, Caldwell pretty much checks off all seven of the deadly sins as the story rolls along. Richly drawn, somehow familiar, the heart of the story is the women who you will love, hate, pity, want to give a good shake. Any book that can create those kinds of emotions in the reader has to be good!

This book was really cute, but heartbreaking at the same time. Well-written lesbian romances between adults are hard to find, and I loved how both the protagonist and Finn were portrayed. I found myself hating them both at different points, but, ultimately, I just ended up hating Finn. I'm lucky in that I couldn't identify too strongly with the narrator, but she was believable and understandable, and the way the writing style set her out worked really well.