This book. Oh my goodness. It is a retelling of Carrie, but the central figure, Madison, Washington, is a multi racial young woman who has been passing as white. Her father is white and her mother is Black. Instead of being focused on the seggsual agency of young women, it includes that, the main focus is a really nuanced approach to thinking about race.

This book is so smart. Just starting with the name of the central character. If you look up, Madison Washington, you will find that this was the name of an enslaved person who led a revolt aboard a slavery transport ship in the US and was responsible for freeing over 100,  enslaved persons by redirecting the ship to an island colonized by the British, who had outlawed slavery. So to have our central character named after this historical figure just adds layers to the story. In addition, the main antagonist is named Jules. And I don’t know if it was intentional, but I had this professor in grad school, who would always say that yt women were the jewel in the crowd of yt supremacy. So it seems really fitting that the horrible yt girl is named Jules. And then there is the way that the author connects the trauma of the civil rights movement to contemporary traumas of police brutality to the trauma of child abuse and bullying experienced by the central character. It’s so well done.

Chapter 26. In the book, there are some revelations that really made me reflect on the assumptions I had made about the story and some of the characters. It was a jaw-dropping moment. I was literally driving down the highway with my mouth hanging open!

I don’t want to say too much more for fear of spoiling the book. So I’ll move on now to talk about the audiobook. The audiobook is narrated by a full cast. And the audio format works so very well here because the narrative structure of the book is told through official transcripts, book, excerpts, and an investigative podcast. So to have the audiobook and the podcast hosts narrating really adds a layer of immersion to listening to this book.

The narrator performances are really strong. They add emotion to the narrative and really take you along on the journey.

Chapter 29, where the podcast hosts perform their final analysis in their concluding episode, felt a little heavy-handed and didactic to me. That’s nothing to do with the audiobook performance and more to do with the writing. It did a lot of the analytical, interpretive work that I would have done on my own as I was reflecting about the book. And so I feel like I lost out on the pleasure of doing that analysis and interpretation myself. However, I can understand why the author chose to go that direction given the way in which US culture remains steeped in racism and YT supremacy. You can’t exactly trust that the reader would get there on their own. I guess technically it’s also a YA book and so maybe some of that interpretive work was necessary for younger readers. 

The book is a five star read for me. It was just so well done. And the audiobook? Seven out of five stars!