Toni Morrison is one of those authors who have always been on my list, mostly due to the controversy around their books (stupid book banners), but I’ve never gotten around to reading them. Both The Bluest Eye and Beloved were on my The Classics Club list I created back in 2012 and I picked up phyical copies sometime after that.
When Morrison passed in 2019, I told myself I would read her works and it took me this long to get to them thanks to always being distracted and just not making an effort. Both are relatively short so ended up on my Rando Book Selector spreadsheet using randomly generated titles from roughly 60 books to slowly chip away at my TBR pile and The Bluest Eye came up as I was planning for a recent vacation and here we are.
When I stumbled across this on NetGalley I knew I wanted to read it.* That book cover has Boston (including where I actually live) on it, it’s an own voices LGBTQIA story, and it happens to be released in October and set in Salem, I mean COME ON how could I NOT request it. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to my hopes for it. Maybe they were too high to start because the book started out strong but puttered out by the end.
I didn’t think it was possible, but I liked this one even less than 
There are no words for how bad this book is. Goodreads should allow a 0 star rating. Leaving it unrated is not enough, I want to acknowledge that I read it and gave it 0 out of 5 stars. I am glad a friend purchased this for all of us to enjoy, but as I say at the end of the post the ONLY way I would recommend it is if you can get it for free and to read it as an example of what not to do in any sort of writing situation.