Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

 

There's really a good deal to like about this book: the writing is at least mostly graceful, the characters are--best I can tell--more or less round and full and have approximately the correct number of dimensions, the themes at play--family, secrets, trauma, greed--are mostly handled subtly and well, it's not at all ambivalent or ambiguous about the monster. The problem for me was that I didn't believe the story for a moment, not one single word; I'm not even sure I can put a finger on any single thing, but my disbelief was never suspended even a millimeter--and because I couldn't ever believe (or at least not disbelieve) the fiction, here, I couldn't ever at all care about it. That's very possibly a me thing.