After loving Girl, Woman, Other I’ve been on a mission to read Evaristo’s backlist of novels. Sadly I think there’s a reason GWO got a lot of hype and her other books didn’t-none of them were as well written and characterized.

I really wanted to love Mr Loverman as the premise sounded great! I just never felt fully pulled in, often getting bored and easily distracted while reading this. While Barry isn’t meant to be totally likeable I can’t root for a misogynist and don’t care to read more about him. I also felt like some of the word choices didn’t fit the characters and were very pretentious.

I’ll stick with my love for GWO and who knows maybe since that was her newest book she’s improved and I’ll enjoy whatever she writes next.

At times it felt like listening to a voice note from a friend telling you about their wild day/week!

This was such a fun and unique novel but also addresses heavier topics. It was a great balance between the two!

There were both heartwarming and Funny, laugh out loud moments. I felt like a learned a lot about Harriet Tubman as well as history from her time in general.

I did get confused at first with the switch between present and our MC Darnell’s flashback chapters. It took me a hot minute to realize but it helped bring the story full circle.

Phenomenal story and I especially recommend the audiobook narrated by Bob!

Thank you to NetGalley and Dial Press for the eARC!

This collection of short stories is indeed as the title suggests “perverted”. Interesting concepts that explore identity, pleasure, the commodification of intimacy/sexual relationships, and dystopian experiences of homophobes/transphobes living out their fucked up fantasies targeting those communities.

While the stories were unique, it just fell flat for me as a whole. Short stories are always 50/50 for me because I often want more from the stories or characters and that was the case with Crane’s collection. Just as I would get invested, the story would be over. And unfortunately more often than not, I didn’t enjoy the stories at all.

They don’t feel cohesive or like they could stand on their own as novellas/with well written fully fleshed out characters. Some stories are very litfic or contemporary while others feel more like dystopia and sci fi-the collection can’t seem to decide what genre it wants to be. And then some are this experimental writing style like a yelp review or a story told only using autocomplete text.

I expected a lot of perverted stories and sexual content naturally, but this was so over the top weird to the max for me. felt like most of the time, Crane was trying to be subversive and offer critiques. There’s not enough time to have the deep exploration required to challenge those beliefs coming full circle and driving the point home! It hid behind dreamlike prose and metaphors instead.

Writing wise it’s too much telling over showing for my taste with endless pop culture references and brand name dropping. Seemed like Crane only knew Gillian Anderson as a reference for queer women due to the amount of characters getting compared to her 😣 It could get repetitive and choppy at times so even for a story I was enjoyed the writing got on my nerves at times. For example there’d be dialogue written as so: “you” Comet said, “listen” comet said “outside our window” comet said. YOU NEED ONLY ADD ‘Comet said’ ONCE! If you’re trying to make it said slowly with pauses plenty of authors write it plain and simple “you.listen.outside our window.” Comet said -so much less choppy and grammatically dense!

Anyways, a breakdown of what stories worked vs didn’t which has led me to my average 3 star rating decision. I didn’t love it or hate it on the whole. And the writing, while style wise didn’t always work for me, has interesting enough moments I’d like to read a novel from Crane and give them another chance.

Stories I liked (or at least didn’t hate): Smear the Queer Siren Island The Perverts The cycle of pitiless impulses Alex Adams, The Dyke Who Wouldn’t Grow Up Catcher Topping is Not For the Grief Stricken

Stories I loved: The Futurewives Failed Messiah Personhood

Stories I didn’t care for: Emergency Harmony (read the first third then skipped the rest because it was too blah for me) This isn’t what I signed up for Your Damning Yelp Review Julie & The Butch I Have No Records of Your Ass

TW/CW: homophobia, sexual content, body shaming, eating disorder, alcoholism, violence, blood, child abuse, vomit, kidnapping, infertility, miscarriage