Score: 85/100 (8.5 out of 10)
Born Mistakes by Mika Mathews is a novella with tremendous promise and potential. It follows a new father named Davis who is wrestling with the stigma of having a child out of wedlock with few resources in addition to his own personal demons. Joining him is Deven, an old classmate who comes back into his life as a hot mess, near-homeless, hopeless, and directionless. This short book had the potential to be an incredible LGBTQA+ story. The pieces were all there. The premise was great. Heck, the blurb is straight fire. However, this book has several problems. First of all, because it is so short, it also feels extremely rushed. Even though there are discussions of the two main characters having known each other in school (and, thus, have a bit of a past), there isn't enough time to elaborate on these things. There's not enough time to flesh this relationship out and make it feel earned and legitimate. One minute, these two are on their own, the next minute they're living together with only one character (Mitchell) pointing out that this is a bit odd and questionable. Another thing that was a bit bothersome were the names of these characters. One of them is named Davis Johnson, and if you know anything about a popular channel called MrGo30, you'd realize how hilarious this name is. It's like calling a character “Smith Black” or “John Doe.” However, the main problem with Davis's name is that it looks and sounds way too much like the name of the other character, Deven. The names start with the same letter and are the exact same length (five letters). Why is this such a big deal, you might ask? Well, it's because it's way too easy to get these two characters mixed up. It can be needlessly confusing. It seems like the author has a thing for main characters whose names start with “D” (like Dante from their main series), however, this is a case where the author probably should've parted with that idea. It's too problematic to have two main characters who have names that are barely distinguishable from one another. So many times, we had to stop and quiz ourselves: Wait, which one is Josiah's dad? Which one has the depression? Which one is vegan? Which one doesn't eat and possibly has an eating disorder? Which one got abused and had to go into foster care only to turn 18 and not qualify? Which one is bisexual and asexual? Which one has the issues with child-protective services despite clearly having sole-custody of the child? Well, it turns out that both have had issues with child-protective services. However, the answer to most of these questions is usually DEVEN. For some reason, Deven is the one who has most of the baggage. Deven is the damsel in distress who needs to be saved, possibly from himself. What makes us say that? Well, Deven reminds us of that person who loves to whine, complain, and blame everyone else for their problems. We have no love loss for Deven, which is unfortunate because the reader having sympathy for him is the crux of the entire book. Without sympathy, Deven has nothing and is nothing. That's true both in literary terms and in terms of the life of his character. He seems like a self-pitying person who thrives on the sympathy of others feelings bad for him. We know that might sound harsh, but it's true. We don't sugarcoat things. We provide constructive feedback. You shouldn't just give all of your problems to one character and turn them into a walking manifestation of mental illness. Give them one mental illness, then have the other things about their character branch out from that. Instead, Deven comes across as a problem. He comes across as trouble. He comes across like a ball and chain or an anchor—a liability. If you pay attention to some of the things that Deven claims (and how he claims them), he comes across as sketchy. Now, this was clearly not the intention of the author as Deven is eventually able to summon the guts to do something brave and heroic. However, for much of this book, he reminded us of the crooked, evil twin brother from Secrets in the Mirror by Leslie Kain, the one who became so dependent on drugs and possessed by his inner turmoils that he disrupted the lives of his own family to get what he wanted. Deven explains his dysthymia (low-grade depression) not just once but twice in a book that's only 70 pages long. He explains it twice in a span of 20 pages! Do you know what that tells us? That tells us that he is needy, self-pitying, craves attention, and uses this sob story like a tool to get what he wants—ultimately favors from people like Davis. You can just tell that he tells this same sob story to people all the time. Among the other suspicious things that Deven talks about are his domestic abuse, veganism, potential eating disorder, and the cloudy circumstances under which he was kicked out of his family. Now, although the ending makes it rather clear that his parents resent him, you can't help but wonder as an outside observer—is Deven not at least somewhat responsible for this problem? Think about it. What if Deven's parents were actually trying to help him before all of this occurred? What if they were trying to feed him after he'd started playing around with cult-like ideas like fasting and extreme dieting? What if they realized that he was starving himself or was becoming sick due to the way/things that he ate? What if they were trying to get him to take his antipsychotic medications or antidepressants, but he was straight-edge (against medicine) and refused? What if they were trying to get him professional help, but he instead refused and continued to be a menace to society? What if they gave him an ultimatum: fix your act, start eating normally, take your medications, get professional help, or get out of here and never come back? We've been there. We've seen it. This is what an intervention sometimes boils down to. You can love some people to death, but it's ultimately their choice of how to live their life and what to do with it. Sometimes, you've gotta tell them: the door is open, go live your life the way you want and suffer the consequences, just not under my roof. For example, imagine having someone in your household who repeatedly harasses and threatens people online, so much so that it becomes criminal and the cops keeping coming to ask them to stop. Would it be immoral to then say: either you stop harassing and threatening people, or you get the hell out of my house? It happens! That doesn't make the parent bad or evil, necessarily. Likewise, that doesn't make the person who got kicked out an innocent victim all of a sudden. There are two sides to each story. Remember: Deven called CPS on his parents three times. We aren't told specifically why he did this, only that he claimed abuse. CPS did not see evidence of this, at least the first two times. What if it were one of the scenarios we described above? Through the things he said, Deven actually gave us all the ammunition we needed to think that was possible (if not probable). Now, it's clear that both Deven and Davis are gay (well, actually, Davis is bi and Deven claims to be gay and asexual). So, what if Deven were kicked out for being gay? Now, that would be messed up. However, like we said before, we think there's more to this than meets the eye. We think there's more to this story than Deven just being gay and being kicked out. He obviously had other issues and problems. The way that he talks about and demeans his parents, even criticizing their weight and eating habits (which has nothing to do with any of the abuse he claims they inflicted on him), highlights the fact that he may not have been such a good son. In fact, he may have been downright vile—someone who likely caused a lot of conflict in the family, and only now is playing the victim because it endears him to Davis. On that note, remember when we said that Deven claims to be gay and asexual? Well, believe it or not, that just gives us another reason to be annoyed with him. Why? Are we homophobic or something? No. It's because this tells us that Deven is willing to court and pursue a relationship with Davis knowing full well that he can never feel what Davis feels and that he can never give the intimate, passionate love that Davis wants. In that sense, he's kinda like Christopher Dunn from Search for Completeness by Stephen Hardy, a frustrating character who is passionately loved by all of the other major characters, yet who friend-zones all of them because he refuses to feel what they feel. Poor Davis! He's stuck providing food, housing, and emotional support to a walking, self-destructive bag of problems who can never give him the intimacy that he deserves. Anyway, we've put a lot of thought and effort into reading this book and providing constructive criticism. It's because this book has all the pieces it needs to be great, they just aren't in the right order or given enough time to breathe. If you're curious about what we're talking about, check it out on Amazon!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
November 2024
Categories |