Omg. Omg.

I heard a mixed bag of reviews but honestly I really enjoyed this. Well idk if enjoyed is the right word, but I do think it’s really good.

I think sometimes it was a little heavy handed but it never felt like it was hitting you over the head. I liked Waldo as a narrator. Even as she makes mistakes, as she repeats the cycles, I never found her annoying or frustrating. I think because she was written in such a way that each decision she made, each thought she had, every action she took, felt natural. Nothing she did ever felt like it came out of nowhere. Even with how quickly she became fixated on Korgy, it made sense once you continued on and released just how numb and depressed she was, so desperate to FEEL and HAVE. She’s been let down by nearly everyone in her life, her father, her mother, all the men in her life.

I only question Frannie’s characterisation. I do believe she was a little bit shallow in her friendship with Waldo, but was she really so condescending as Waldo made her seem? Or was it Waldo’s projection? It’s obvious Waldo, despite trying to seem like she had accepted the life she was born into, was embarrassed and ashamed by it. She makes jokes about being white trash as a defence mechanism. If she laughs at herself first, it’ll hurt less when others do it. I think Frannie did genuinely care for Waldo.

That last paragraph is beautiful. “Right now, I don’t want for anything.” A perfect final line for a character like Waldo who wantswantswants. She stops waiting for the people around her to be who she wants them to be. A lesson she learned from her mother at the end there maybe? It’s her mums fault for messing her up, but it’s now Waldo’s responsibility to fix it.

Right now, I don’t want for anything.