Foggy Book Club discussion

Thoughts on the book so far

It's nice that the mystery plot is finally going somewhere. I was starting to lose hope. lol Very curious about who Mina could have trusted enough to meet up with (and who is, therefore, her killer).

So glad we're finally getting a bit more into Mina's backstory as well. Chapter 40s revealations into why Mina stayed in the closet, despite the misery it was causing both her and Sophie to feel legitimate at last. Living in a big city myself it's been so easy to be me and not worry about retribution. It makes me feel fortunate.

It makes it even more tragic, in my opinion, that Mina was killed. It seems like she was finally going to tell her truth and live her life. Telling Kyle was likely just a first step.

It's interesting to have an LGBT main character in a story of this type. Young adult books with main LGBT characters usually aren't genre-fiction, so that's been fun.

Finally Sophie's mum's reasons for being so overbearing are out, and I guess they make sense.

About the mystery plot, Jeez Louise, this book feels more about their relationship than a murder mystery! I feel like we need an amount of backstory to be invested, but this is just too much. I want details about the murder, I want suspects! for the whole first half of the book the murder plot has been so stale.

I like that they've formed a little crew to figure out the murder, that's fun.


I understand and appreciate that our main characters are LGBT and the whole small town thing, but I do feel like Mina is a manipulative person, and some of her behaviours to me read as emotional abuse. I very much feel like they had a dysfunctional relationship, and of course it's near impossible to have a healthy relationship with someone you aren't "allowed" to be with, but yeah, it makes me sad.
And it makes me wonder why all these little details about their relationship are important?

Yes, Mina is manipulative, but I think it's, unfortunately, more because she's closeted and miserable than a truly vicious person. Secrets of that level sour a person. In the US sometimes a politician comes out and they were even harming LGBT rights and it's depressing in a way to think that their self-hate was so intense that they helped craft laws that caused so many problems for the LGBT community (including themselves). Mina isn't that bad off of course but she's definitely doing something that feels like emotionally harmful to herself and Sophie.

I actually think this book was misrepresented a bit. The mystery element is definitely secondary. Life issues take the center stage. I don't feel like that's the author's issue so much as the publishers deciding how to phrase the book blurb and in what way they'd promote it. It should have been promoted more as a contemporary LGBT young adult book with the added mystery.

I 100% agree with that. I enjoyed the story but I was expecting a mystery and instead got a story about loss and grief.
I think the self-hate is very much the reason for Mina's manipulation, and honesty the reason for sophie's passiveness towards her too.