For a book that claimed to be a feminist retelling there sure does seem to be a lot revolving around men.

• Bernice is by-chance saved when the UPS man shows up with a package and catches what's going on. And Ashton (Bluebeard) gets to take himself out with cyanide never having to endure the consequences of his actions
• Ruby is saved from the wolf by a man with a hunting knife who frees her from the wolfs stomach and then makes her the coat as a trophy
• Gretel is constantly contradicted by her brother, Hans, who had a completely different experience in the house with the old lady than she did
• Ashlee's entire storyline is the pursuit of a man, Brandon, on a dating show in the hopes that she can find true love. We later find out that the entire narrative surrounding her on the show was manipulated to make her out to be the season's villain, the material for which was extracted by host Jake Jackson.
• Raina is set up for the entertainment industry job with Jake Jackson by her father, and "Little Man"/R is the one who helps her get through the editing job.

In all of these narratives yes, it is the women who are enduring and surviving, but it's consistently a man at the reins with the ability to be cast as a hero or manipulate the story. Right up to the final chapter, an abrupt "where are they now" epilogue that should've been several chapters fleshing out the reactions of the women to Jake Jackson posing as group leader/psychologist Will by... wearing a skin suit?? (😬)

I fear I have formed an unintentional habit of choosing the most "weird girl" book out of the lot for these read alongs 🫣🤣 First it was When We Lost Our Heads and now this. Granted, neither of these books are as "weird girl" as they could get. This one just felt like it left something to be desired. It would be getting somewhere good for me, and then it would lose me. The whole plot with R/Little Man just threw me right off of it, particularly when he legitimately split himself in half when Raina chose Jake over him. I also kept getting lost between envisioning more true to fairytale-esque characters and picking through the subtext of who the characters in each of the girls' remembered stories were. I've seen some debate between whether Ruby's coat was actually the skin of a wolf or if it was the fur coat belonging to a human man who groomed and assaulted her. I'm still struggling a bit with Ashlee and Raina and it's making me feel dense. This might be due in part to my own lack exposure to the fairytales from which their inspiration is drawn (I have seen suggestion that Ashlee is Cinderella which I can see in hindsight).

I really had no exposure to the story of Bluebeard, but Bernice's chapter is fleshed out in such a way that I didn't come away feeling lost. Well, beyond her being the only one who could hear the voices of the women, still trying to wrap my head around that. Was this a guilt thing and her mind was manifesting all of their stories so that she could tell them? Were the notebooks full of the stories of the women's demises and thus by reading them she acquired their "voices" and the desire to share their stories? Is this trauma fueled psychosis and the voices stop by the end not because she removed the items from her home but because she had made peace with her story and being the lone survivor, and her mission to tell the stories of the women in the group.