Book Summary and Reviews of Honey by Imani Thompson

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Janine_S

A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do
This is a provocative, "wickedly funny," character-driven, dark novel about a young black woman who murders men she considers bad and justifies it in the name of feminism. Ysra is working on her PhD on Afropessimism (a social theory that says "Black people will always be seen in a civil society as enemies due to the racial structure built on slavery."). Isra's moral constructs are based on this and she views her relationships within this context. As the novel begins, she's bored by the students she has to cater to and the men she has to deal with. When her friend has her thesis stolen and then published under her white male professor's name. Ysra is convinced that patrimony and vestiges of colonialism can only be resolved by murder!

l've read several female serial murder books where the women are taking out the bad men, but none of these are based on such a philosophical premise. It's brilliant. I'm not sure l agree that murder is the solution, but all the men in this book are worthy of consideration for it (LOL). They have misogynistic and discriminatory views of specially towards black women (and probably women in general) and miss signals of the need for equality in a relationship.

Ysra is a fascinating character. I'm not sure l agree with her approach, but then I am not black. But I understand her frustration as a woman that we are second class citizens. I think the author's dark humor is her way to say this needs to change - kinda "this isn't right, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do." All tongue in cheek, of course.

The book is well written. The plot well paced and the characters are nicely developed.
I’d like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC.

labmom55

Boring main character
2.5 stars, rounded down
If you’re going to write a thriller from the POV of a serial killer, it’s important to make the character interesting. But Ysra just kind of bored me. She’s a PhD student, writing her thesis on afropessimisim at Cambridge, teaching undergrads. One of her friends has just been dumped by a professor she was working with. After Yrsa witnesses the professor die from a bee sting, she has a sort of epiphany and decides more bad men need to die. Thompson struggles to really rationalize Yrsa’s motives. At one point, the book frames it as an offshoot of the hypothesis of her thesis. The paper posited that liberation from racism would never be achieved except through death. So she decides to change the object of the violence, from the black woman to the white man. Think of it as revenge or retribution as the premise for a philosophical theory.

The story moves at a glacial pace. It’s disjointed, veering between thriller and character drama and succeeding at neither. Too often, Yrsa’s motives (drug addiction?) are only hinted at. The book just left me confused and disgruntled, especially with what I felt was a cop out ending.

My thanks to Netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.