Hey y'all! My name is Yvette and welcome to my channel.
Today I'm going to be talking about When Katie Met Cassidy by Camille Perri.
This video I'm hoping is going to be part review, part discussion and part rant.
I really disliked this book so it's gonna be that type of video, just a heads up.
After I finished this book, I initially decided not to do this video because
This is an f/f romance and do I really want to make a negative book review about something that we don't have enough of as it is?
But it's been a week since I finished it
and I can't stop thinking about it and I still have strong feelings about it, so here we are.
This is an ownvoices queer romance and the relationship between two women, Katie and Cassidy.
Cassidy is a high powered, emotionally unavailable butch lesbian
and Katie is a woman who is fresh off of a broken engagement with a man.
They are both lawyers and they're opposing counsels for some kind of corporate negotiation and
and they start hanging out outside of work.
Prior to meeting Cassidy, Katie identifies as straight.
Like she's never been attracted to a woman sexually or romantically,
she's never been exposed to queer people or queer culture,
but when she meets Cassidy, she started to question her sexuality.
Before I really jump into this discussion, I do want to say
that I've seen some ownvoices reviews talk about how
they love this book and that they see themselves in this book
and no matter what I have to say about When Katie Met Cassidy and the representation in it,
I just wanna acknowledge that every queer experience is different and valid and
every queer person deserves to see themselves represented in a way that they feel seen.
And I say that because one of my main problems with this book is the representation and
when I make my criticisms, I don't want it to seem like I'm devaluing anyone else's experience.
That being said, this book felt like it was written by a straight person who binge watched The L Word
and then wrote a book about what they saw.
More than once when I was reading this book, I had to double check that the author was queer.
Because while this book does get a lot right about what it's like being queer
and what it's like being a part of a queer lady community,
it does really really lean into lesbian stereotypes.
Like, Cassidy is such a shame..and
I'm realizing that that is a really dated comparison, and that I feel like I just aged myself, but *shrugs*
Cassidy is cold. She's a heartbreaker. She works too hard, plays too hard; She can't commit.
And then we have Katie who's this doe-eyed country straight girl, and soon as she walks into the gay bar,
every lesbian wants her and is all over her.
To me Katie and Cassidy - there was not much else to them. They were nothing more than stereotypes.
Their characters felt like they were just culminations of different aspects of these stereotypes
instead of them being actual people with personalities.
And like, these weren't even relevant stereotypes. They're kind of outdated.
That's not to say that women like this don't exist anymore, because they definitely do, but the way it's written in this book,
if I didn't know any better, I would have thought it was published in the 90s or the early 2000's.
The more I thought about this, the more I realized that my problem with these characters weren't that they were stereotypes,
it was that they lacked any kind of nuance.
Which..this is a short light romance,
it don't need to be deep, I wasn't any depth going into it.
This book, I think, is aimed at being that fluffy entertaining story that are a dime a dozen in hetero romances
but something that is a lot harder to find in f/f romance.
And that's fine! That more than fine because we need those kinds of books too.
However, I found Katie and Cassidy to be flat and dull and I think
that their characterizations relied to heavily on stereotypes in a way that was that was lazy
and perpetuated these one dimensional ideas of what a queer woman should look like.
And on to my main problem with this book and that would be the main character Katie,
who is the one who starts off the book thinking that she's straight.
And reading this, I was near constantly cringing the entire time [reading this book].
Because her inner thoughts are kinda homophobic and sexist and gross.
I was only seven pages into this book before I gave my first verbal "Oh no..."
like, you know, that moment when you know you've made a bad decision.
It's a part where Katie is thinking about Cassidy and I'm gonna read that part out loud.
And that little part might not seem like a big deal on it's own, but there are so many comments like this
just one after another, and it got to be a bit much after a while.
At first, I didn't really pay stuff like this any mind, because I was thinking that,
this is all new to Katie and she's starting off in this really judgmental and ignorant place regarding sexuality and gender
because she's going to learn and she's gonna grow as a person.
And character growth is my shit. I love an unlikable character who grows to be a decent person,
but Katie never grows.
Well into the book, she is still thinking these kinds of things
and I'm assuming she grows by the end of the book because this is a happily ever after romance
but it doesn't show it on the page.
Like I'm assuming she's okay with queerness because she ends of with a woman, but
there aren't any moments where I can remember it showing the process of her changing the way she thinks about gender and sexuality.
In the book, she'll have a problem with something and it's either never brought up again
or its brought of later and she's suddenly okay with it.
For example, when she first finds out that Cassidy wears briefs, she's disgusted,
but then a few chapters later, she finds it sexy.
And there's no explanation of how she got from point A to point B, and why she suddenly thinks it's sexy.
And that annoys me to no end. If you're going to have a queer character thinking all these
ignorant and estupid things, then you also need to show me that journey she goes on
realizing that she's wrong and changing her way of thinking and becoming less of an insufferable character.
Also, a gay male character shows up for one scene during the book, and they gave his back story and it was terrible and I'm gonna read it.
And just no. Fuck no to all of that. I'm not even gonna go into why having a queer character be with someone who
"savagely bullied" them is not a good idea.
And one more thing, the concept of bisexuality is never brought up in this book.
There is a point where Katie is debating of, 'Am I straight or am I gay now?'
And she never really comes to a conclusion, and I think that the reason that was done in that way
is to say kind of like, you don't need labels, which is fine.
But if you're going to debate on whether you're straight or gay, why not also mention bisexuality?
Like, it's 20gayteen. We're pass this.
I lied, one more thing. This book also comes from a very white, very privileged perspective.
Like I think there was only one character that was mentioned to be of color.
And it was also surprisingly hetero-normative for a queer romance.
I read this article that was like, 'We had Call Me By Your Name, and then we had Simon vs the Homosapian Agenda and
now we have When Katie met Cassidy' and I really really don't like that comparison.
With everything I've said about this book far and along with it being so wonder bread
...just no.
That is a grand statement to make and I don't know if part of the reason why I don't like this book is just because I'm being petty.
Like I've seen so much hype for this book, for it being a queer book
Like, it was a Book of the Month choice and it was on all these different sites like
Entertainment Weekly and Vogue and Autostaddle and NPR, and it was getting so much coverage but
there are so many great f/f romances out there that don't perpetuate these kinds of stereotypes
and yet, THIS was the one that was promoted.
When Katie Met Cassidy was not a terrible, awful, horrendous book.
I didn't like it for sure, but there were still some moments that were okay.
Like, when it covered what it's like to part of this tight nit queer community, I thought those moments were really nice.
And there were some chapters that briefly touched on what it's like being in a relationship where
one woman is femme and the other is butch.
And I'm a queer woman who is feminine and I'm with another woman who is androgynous
so when we go out together, we're a bit obviously queer, and the way people see us and treat us is a bit different.
and some of those moments, I was just like, YES!!
But all those little things weren't enough to make up for everything else I didn't like about this book.
And probably my biggest disappointment was that this book did have so much potential to be great,
to be that fluffy, entertaining, light-hearted romance that we need.
But for me, it just didn't quite get there.
One a side note, if you're looking for a contemporary f/f romance that features a butch and femme couple,
Once Ghosted, Twice Shy by Alyssa Cole is coming out next year in 2019 and I cannot wait.
The couple on the cover of this book are a real like couple and I am just so excited for this book.
So, closing thoughts. I am happy that an f/f romance has gotten so much attention in mainstream media,
but I am less happy that that book is this book, because I do think that it could have been a lot better than what it was.
That's all I have for y'all today. If you've read this book, come talk to me in the comments below.
Please tell me of I'm completely off base or if I'm missing something.
I hope y'all enjoyed this video, thank you for watching, and I'll see you next time.
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