The Initial Insult Duology by Mindy McGinnis

Published on 3 June 2024 at 10:18

Uhhhhh okay? Sure...

A Summary

Tress Montor's parents have been missing since she was a kid. Everyone was weird about it, including her ex best friend Felicity who claims to have no idea what happened to them. Tress decides that Felicity WILL tell her the truth, because she's going to lock her in the basement and torture her until she does.

What I Think...

First of all, why do the animals have povs? That straight up pulls me out of the story and makes me not want to pick it up again. The plot is pretty interesting and the characters are well written. Everything makes so much sense. But the way it was written is like it was trying SO HARD to not be like other books...girl. We love other books.

Anyway, I like how it’s a subtle retelling. It uses themes from Poe without trying to BE the works. It modernizes it and adds characters that make sense today. It’s so interesting. The way that Felicity and Tress remember the past as they’re talking about it is great too. Once you start reading it, it becomes SUCH a story. A tragic one where the main character loses everything when she’s not even twelve years old yet.

I find Ribbit extremely creepy, but that was his purpose. He’s written so well that just reading his POV makes me nauseous. In the first book, I genuinely felt so bad for him. It seemed like Hugh had a big problem with him because he was “too nice” and I’m pretty sure he did. Hugh isn’t a psychic and I don’t believe in “just knowing” that someone is a bad person based on (not their behavior or actions at all), just a feeling. Like sure, you can have that feeling but the dude outcast him based on a bad feeling, pretty fucked up and I don’t really blame Ribbit for being pissed off about that (doesn’t mean it’s okay to burn people to death, maybe a punch in the gut, though?).

In book two, reading his POV is what I imagine it’s like seeing inside the brain of a school shooter. It’s off putting and creepy, but not interesting, in my opinion.  Especially not when Tress is DYING from an infected panther scratch, finding out what happened to her parents AND facing attempted murder. It’s so hard to care about what Ribbit is doing when Tress is fighting for her life the entire time.

I was so glad about the ending. Omg, I love a telltale heart. The story, the plot and the characters are all so great. There was just something about the structure that I disliked. And the Animal POVs just seemed so strange? I guess Rue’s POV lets us know someone is trying to kill Tress, but I dunno. Not my cup of tea, I guess. Definitely pulled me out of the story each time.

I would recommend this book to others. I would just add to my recommendation that it’s kinda weird and I wouldn’t read it again, but I would watch the movie.

The plot and characters get all of their stars 100% beautiful and perfect, but something about the way it’s written makes it so hard not to DNF that I have to take a star away and the animal povs definitely increased that DNF risk by like 30%.

 

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