Our Kind of Cruelty - Araminta Hall

Approximately half of women who are killed are killed by their current or former partners, or individuals closely involved with them.  In this book, V/Verity does not die--but the reasoning the main character in this book uses is the sort of thing that leads to those deaths.  It is deeply, deeply disturbing, all the more because it's painfully obvious that these sorts of thought patterns actually exist.

Let me back up.

This book is written from the perspective of Mike, in the form of a statement he's written for his lawyer when he's on trial for murder.  It follows Mike's stalking, harassment, and assault of his ex-girlfriend, V--though Mike doesn't see it that way.  He thinks that he and Verity are still deeply in love, and that she's just punishing him for cheating on her.  Because obviously you punish someone by marrying someone else, claiming you are deeply in love with that person, etc.  But Mike is convinced that V is just stringing him along to the next stage in their old sex game, the Crave, and that when she gives the signal, he will swoop in and save her and they will have rough sex forever more.

This book, and Mike himself, made me so angry.  Hall clearly does not subscribe to Mike's thoughts, which is good, but there's this knowledge that there really are people who think this is normal lurking in the background that made me want to punch someone in the face.  Mike thinks he's completely fine, but we can see in a variety of ways that he is completely falling apart and is a total sociopath to boot.  The horror of watching this, and the anger of what is doing and how he's treating V, really propelled along the parts of the book that led up to Mike's arrest and trial.

What comes after his arrest is even worse, because when Mike is on the line for his absolutely horrible actions, he decides to pull V down with him, and everyone goes along with it.  The actual pacing of this part of the book is terrible, because it's basically just a step-by-step account of the trial, much of it in a "he said, she said" format to some degree--not always between Mike and V, but between their families, lawyers, etc.  But the anger just keeps rising, because the slut-shaming is rampant and V's life is ruined in even more ways just because she likes to have sex with a dedicated partner and uuuuugh I'm just so angry.

I've never read anything by Hall before, so it's hard for me to say what the writing quality actually is here.  The thing is, the writing isn't that good--it's very stilted, and lurches about, and just does not flow very well at all.  But, because of the form this book takes, it's hard to tell if that's Hall's writing style of if it's just the style she has adapted for the character of Mike--who, let's be honest, doesn't exactly seem like he would be a great author.  And while the pacing is definitely bad in the second part of the book, it's not exactly ideal in the first part, either.  You can tell that something bad is coming and going to happen, but Mike spends a lot of time bragging about how fit he is, renovating his house or thinking about renovating his house, and eating things in the meantime, all the while pondering how said it is that everyone wants him even though, no, people don't actually really like psychos.

If you want a book that fills you with blind rage, this is the book for you.  If not, not ideal.

2 stars out of 5.