Anomaly’s Reviews > The Devil's Tree > Status Update

Straight, white girl compares trailer park poverty and the woes thereof with being a black girl in a racist town and being a gay man in a homophobic church. This book is very disappointingly tone deaf and basically reduces these characters to plot devices for the main character to virtue signal and feel pity with... Not uncommon for the genre, but still exhausting.

Did... did a teenage boy just get possessed and used to torment a gay man with insinuations that because he's gay he'd also like a minor..?!

"a camouflage-colored wagon, probably a toy some bubba had gotten his son for Christmas in hopes he’d grow up to be a redneck, just like his daddy" ... You ever feel like an author has thinly veiled contempt for the people who live in the conditions or area they portray in their book? This just... it runs me the wrong way, especially combined with the welfare shaming. Odd, since she was born in Texas. 🤨

The main character is whiny, but I can deal with that. Overall, this is like the book form of a B-movie or a horror themed Hallmark movie so far, and I like that. But I am SUPER not here for the damn welfare shaming that is extremely prevalent in this narrative. Like, calling a friend an asshole for offering financial help and bitching about never taking handouts like her mom who's on welfare level shaming. Yick.