Heather Butcher's Reviews > Black River

Well someone has to say this, some honesty is needed with this fashionable author. Firstly, he’s high jacked Scandinavian noir, why, he’s a Midlander, and ticked every clique under the sun.
Writing in the first person, main character is female, bi sexual, couldn’t quite bring himself to make the character a full blown lesbian, disability ticked as she is deaf, ensuring the reader knows most of the town is racist. Awful book, where the main character is running around obsessing about her missing best friend, implausible and childish. How many times can you run around a forest and in and out of an area around a river. No respite, no change in storyline, so boring.
The whole book is loaded with hillbilly types dabbling in very masculine fantasies like snakes, car parts and shoe/ foot fetishes. If I was Swedish I would be furious at the way he depicts rural Sweden, as full of creepy inbread people. Even their Midsummer tradition, seems to me to be depicted not favourably nor as a celebration in a good way.
I won’t be reading anymore of this nonsense. You do not need every politically correct box on the planet ticked, nor practice such cultural misappropriation, if you are a good author. A lazy way to write a book, but good luck to him, cause it’s worked and everyone thinks his books are brilliant. Not.