Desenhos Ocultos

Terrible, racist and transphobic propaganda

Anyone rating this anything higher than 3 stars needs to never read a book again or claim to know what a good book is. This feels like it’s written by someone in a college creative writing class who watches way too much Fox News. It’s not only racist but the absolutely nonsensical twist, that the child is actually the opposite gender than we’ve been lead to believe, exists for no reason other than to bash trans people. The writing in general is on a Colleen Hoover level and even tries to explain away this shortcoming by making it a twist about the main character writing the book after the fact(?).

Jason Rekulak did little to no research on recovery programs and yet uses them to bash those who are overweight and don’t cling to religion. Mallory was possibly the dumbest protagonist ever, nothing she did made any sense and even sympathized with the neighbor who was blatantly racist and every kind of phobic. There’s one scene where the parents show their five year old a book with illustrations of anal sex and eating someone out. I sure don’t want this author anywhere near a child after reading that scene.

The one person of color in the entire book happens to be Mexican and also a landscaper, like come on. We couldn’t think of a single other profession for him? They get searched by police at one point and Mallory thinks it’s outrageous that he’s upset about getting searched at all. Maybe because it was pointed out that he’s a minority and that it happens in real life on a daily basis just based on someone’s skin tone??? Oh and later on, Mallory gets injected with baking soda straight into her body and is just totally fine and there’s no repercussion from that whatsoever. Come on!!