A review by clownface
Godshot by Chelsea Bieker

1.0

TERF bullshit: the book. 

I don't know if Bieker identifies as a TERF. I don't mean to accuse her of that. However, even a surface-level reading of Godshot is uncomfortable biological essentialism. Women can never do wrong; men can only do wrong. Women are constantly defined in relation exclusively to their vaginas and ability to get pregnant. All the women in this book are explicitly defined by the way that men have hurt them. Men are explicitly defined by how they hurt women.

Our protagonist has a complicated relationship with her mother, who is outright abusive and neglectful. However, the ending focuses on our protagonist deciding that her mother was not an awful person; rather, she was a virtuous good woman driven to do terrible things by an unseen, unknown man.

If you want feminist literature, read something that allows women to be complex people, rather than creatures defined exclusively by their genitals and by how much they can suffer.