I debated for a long time on what book would be my first post on here, and this is where we landed. Starting off strong. Deep breaths~
If I could describe this book in a few words, it would be "rancid, grimy, visceral, vile." I saw this book talked about by a few booktok creators on TikTok, but I can't recall any of them actually recommending that anyone read this book. If you are already an experienced reader of the splatterpunk genre and are looking for more, this might be worth checking out. If you've never read splatterpunk before, maybe start with something less intense. This book is intense.
This story follows a 40 y/o widowed woman (Jodi) as she is driving her two college-age kids (daughter & son) to school, when they stop at a gas station. They're in the middle of nowhere, not a lot of people milling around, it feels very desolate. You could be forgiven for dropping your guard in a place like this, it doesn't feel particularly dangerous, just dusty and kinda grimy. We get some very minor sexual tension between Jodi and the guy behind the gas station counter as she thinks about her life after she drops her kids off at college. I think it's an interesting note about sexuality as you age (not that 40 is particularly old) - she has a lot more experience, she knows what she likes, and she is not ashamed of her sexuality. It's an interesting contrast between the mother role, which historically (in the US at least) has been framed as meek and subservient/submissive, and the role of a self-assured, confident, sexually active single woman.
We get glimpses into how she raised her two kids on her own - they both fell in the love with the visual arts, so Jodi spent decades fostering that love in her kids by taking them to movies. It's clear during this brief introduction that Jodi loves her kids a lot, and is willing to sacrifice parts of herself for them. While she's in the gas station we get an interesting self-reflection from Jodi. The guy behind the counter shows her to the employee-only bathroom, which is advertised to be the cleaner option, and it is not until he opens the bathroom door for her that she thinks "this move could have proven fatal." She is unconsciously placing a lot of trust in this man she just met, and not realizing it until after the fact - there's a lot of psychological research about why we tend to view attractive people as intelligent and trustworthy, but that'll have to be a separate post. As she thinks to her children waiting in the car, Jodi is described as a woman who is by no means stupid, but definitely not great at making decisions. Ultimately, she's very human - she has sexual needs, she's a loving and protective mother, and sometimes she makes bad decisions.
When she returns from the bathroom and gets back into the car with her kids, she does not immediately notice that anything is amiss. Like I said, you could be forgiven for dropping your guard in a place like this, especially after a flirty encounter with a handsome man. The absolute rollercoaster of a reading experience that follows is nothing short gut-wrenching, dreadful, and horrifying. Without too many spoilers, Jodi is forced to witness and engage in terrible things and she feels completely powerless, until she doesn't.
The feminine rage and motherly protectiveness is in full force by the end of this book, and while I am not a parent, I can identify with feminine rage. The sheer terror that her power exudes is exhilarating. If we look at some of the popular romance tropes through the lens of Default Heterosexual Sado-Masochism (thank you ContraPoints for this), specifically Predator-Prey, Dominant-Submissive, Penetrating-Penetrated, and Masculine-Feminine, this book has a lot to say. ContraPoints notes that these tropes are not necessarily always linked to manhood, but within a heteronormative view of sexuality, they often are. In this book, The Man (the villain of the story) is only identified by his "masculine" characteristics - we never learn his real name or anything about him that we can use to muster up some empathy for this character, but there are plenty of descriptions about his genitalia and the violence he inflicts, usually of the stabbing/"penetrating" variety.
Within heteronormative sexuality, male dominance is often considered the norm, so anything that deviates from that norm has a tendency to be fetishized (i.e., fem-dom). What I liked about this book is that the feminine rage/power did not feel fetishized. There is a quite literal removal of power at the end of this book (i.e., impotence) that really brings The Man down a few pegs. It's interesting that within a heteronormative sexual perspective, power is tied to manhood. The loss of one's manhood is a loss of power, the loss of one's inability to be the 'hunter' in a hunter-gatherer scenario.
While his theories may not be widely upheld in 2025, Sigmund Freud did have a lot of interesting things to say on sexuality. In his text 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality' he states "The sexuality of most male human beings contains an element of aggressiveness--a desire to subjugate." Freud described this as something innate, an unconscious drive within the male mind, while women are envious of this (i.e., penis envy). For the record, I think a lot of Freud's theories on sexual identity development are flawed. All this to say, there is a critical turning point in this story where the power dynamic shifts, and the hunt(er) becomes the hunt(ed). The Man pays a high price for his incel beliefs on sexuality and gender, and Jodi rises triumphant from the carnage, on equal footing now as a hunt(er).
Trigger warnings: gore, sexual assault, necrophilia, forced incest, murder, kidnapping
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