Just-UGH
I have read the whole series thus far and what started out as compassion and concern for Keri/Karin has now turned to something close to disgust. As a traumatic sexual/mental/physical abuse survivor, I understand and empathize with a lot of her behaviors. We make choices, often unconsciously, based on your previous experiences, and are often completely surprised when things turn out the same way over and over again. So I get that. Totally. But at some point we all (abused or not) have to take responsibility for our choices and make a conscious decision to learn how to do things differently, and I have never seen that here. Even being aware she is turning out like her mother and hating herself because of it has not been enough to make her change. At least so far as these books have indicated.
I did notice several instances where she did say that she knows she was a bad mom or she knows that she made crappy decisions, but I get the feeling that those were just words designed to garner sympathy and, yes, attention rather than any heartfelt belief. After all, admitting you are or were wrong means nothing if you don’t follow up with changed behaviors.
One thing in the prologue that has stuck with me negatively throughout this book was her comments about detesting kids and thinking they should all be locked up. Yes, she learned that from her mother-but that is one thing that she never even tried to fix in herself (that I saw). While not everyone likes kids and they are free to say that without judgment (because not everyone has to have children to be somehow worthy!), I just felt like her remarks were malicious and ugly and unnecessary. It made me sad.
Last, there is this phrase that keeps coming to mind and it’s that if everyone around you thinks you are an asshole, you might be an asshole. I got tired of her claiming all the time that she was always accused of lying but never lied-in the beginning as a child, yes, because we all know (especially in those times) that adults were always presumed innocent and children rarely believed in abusive homes), but over and over and over again, she claimed that everyone else was lying about stuff and she wasn’t. I was troubled by that.
Overall, I obviously liked the books well enough that I have read them all up to this point. But it’s more like the disgusting voyeuristic desire to slow down at the sign of a car accident to see the gory aftermath rather than a true liking of the book-which makes me a rather disgusting human being. Because of this, I likely won’t read the 7th book because I can’t watch this train wreck and feel good about it. I don’t want to be glad of bad things happening to her, and if I stop right now I can likely still muster some compassion and empathy for her.