Cottonwood

Hilarious, sad, violent, true slowburn with an alien single dad.

While the premise is similar to the movie „District 9“, Smith claims she came up with the draft of the book far before the movie came out. Her great, easily digestible writing and sensitive-but-getting-shit-done FMC as well as her detailed, atmospheric world created an amazing experience. I loved every character, except the evil guys, because they were sooo infuriatingly diabolical and manipulative and made the situation always so hopeless (good work Mrs. Smith). I even loved Samaritan, the creep (at some point)! I laughed and cried tears of sorrow and joy, because reading this was truly an emotional rollercoaster. Violent, painful, gruesome, and if one good thing happened something much worse followed. And I‘m saying MUCH worse. Readers need to be careful as the story contains SA, mentions of rape, elements of gore and body horror, explicit depictions of violence, torture and, well: the whole system of the camp which means depictions of really really bad living conditions. And yet, Sarah (our FMC) always picked herself up. Others were not as lucky and strong. (There is so much death and tragedy.) The book is indeed not a romance per se, more of a „we gotta help these aliens in this fucked up, dead-end institution“ but the romance does play a good part of it I’d say. There are (consensual) explicitly sexual scenes, but nothing too freaky (that is, if you think sex with an insectoid alien isn’t freaky). I‘m so so glad there was a happy ending.. I sobbed with my whole body and emptied my tears glans 2 times. The ML was such a pleasure, and his kid was so precious that my enjoyment of the book was highly influenced by his cuteness. The ending was the bandaid I deserved for my suffering. Thank you Mrs. Smith for this excellent story.