My thoughts on... toxic books

Today I am coming to talk about two novels that I read during this 2021 and I did not like because I thought they are toxic and that they do not make any good to their readers. With this post I don't want to say "Do not read these novels", what I want to express is that we have to be careful and critic with the books we read because some of them can be toxic and harmful for our mental health.

1. They are written by privileged white-middle class women and for white-middle class women. All the problems their main characters have are first world problems. "My expensive car broke down", "my maid is rude with me", "I have too much work at the office", "I don't know how to decorate my house", "I don't know what to wear on a date", "the expensive table I bought for my new house don't fit in my dining room".

2. The stories were not realistic, not even for a privileged white-middle class women's life. "All men want to sleep with me", "all men who want to sleep with me are hot", "all my friends are so nice ans have perfect lives", "I am great at my job", "everyone loves me", "my body is perfect", "my flat is perfect".

3. Their partners die at the beginning of the novel and their mourning is not even realistic. Now, I am not saying how a person has to mourn but... One of them gets angry at everyone who tries to help her and is very rude even to nice people who really want to help her. The other one gets over it after three months and is already looking for someone to have sex with.

4. They are racist and snobs. In one of the books she talks about her maid which is an immigrant from South America. They way she talks about her is hummiliating. She remmarks all the time that she comes from an upper class. She uses all the clichés that harm so much immigration that I'm not even going to name here. I felt very angry that something like that was able to be published in a book in the 2010s. In the other book the main character goes to Nepal and everything she sees is great. I am not saying that Nepal is not a beautiful country. What I mean is that it is not ok to romanticize the idea of kids playing on the street and mums working while carrying babies on their backs. We have to be realistic when talking about a country and it's socioeconomic situation Kids begging for money in the streets and mums working with their newborns on their backs is not the ideal.

5. Toxic body image. Can they please stop creating characters that talk all the time about body image, loosing weight, dieting and exercising? This things can be triggering to people who suffers from an eating disorder.

6. The stories are not even good, they are full of clichés. As I said, the books are about white women who live in a big city, have a great job which they love, make good money, have great friends, great families, great bodies, great hot dates. Their lives are shown as something perfect which is something far from reality.

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victoriasthoughtson