Nope nope nope this was so not it for me. I guess some people might like it, but I managed to read about 70 pages before having to give up.
The big issue I had with the story is the main character Dixie. She is so annoyingly cocky. Don’t get me wrong, I looooove a good confident woman, but this was too much. She was always chatting shit to her superior just to get a rise out of him, but not even in a let’s-fight-the-authority kind of way, just stupidly. Another example is her chatting to a guy about motorbikes, and he says she does know a lot for an insurance worker. She then goes “You’re not gonna catch me, buddy. I got moves you can’t even imagine” and then shoots off her amazing excuse, which is that motorbikes also get insured. Wow girl what a fucking move, surely he was blown away *eyeroll* He already knew she was police undercover btw. She even runs in a house on fire for no reason at all, and as soon as she gets in she breaks her foot like a fool and needs to be carried out by firemen that should actually be saving actual victims.
She also walks into a room and obviously has to think about how all the men there are soooo attracted to her and the woman is obviously going to hate her because our MC is super hot and is distracting the other girl’s man. UGHHHGGHHG this kind of veiled misogyny is the worst. Dixie is basically telling us how bad the other woman is, but to do that she attacks the fact the other is wearing a tight dress (a crime!!) and is all over a man (straight to prison!) and is annoyed when she interrupts (how dare she??!!). But really all this tells us is that Dixie is a judgmental person that likes to boring down other women to show off how cool she is instead. This is old and tired.
Moreover, trying to make this other woman, called Skye, look bad doesn’t work when you are a piece of shit yourself. At some point they are decorating for the holidays and DIxie notices that other religions are represented, and then “challenges” Skye because there is no Ramadan representation, which maybe it was okay since it was not Ramadan at that particular moment??? But okay. When Skye then says she has a flag for that too, Dixie just goes on a tirade about how she doesn’t get why they can’t just get their own tradition instead of “including every Tom, Dick and Harry?”
Which is really not the jab she thinks as maybe the town has people of other religions and thus those are the town’s own traditions already, she just racist. Secondly, celebrating other religions is not a bad thing??? And thirdly, why were you criticising the lack of Islam rep, and then did a 180 turn and said the other traditions should not be celebrated? Is it maybe only because you want to be a little criticising bitch?
Skye by the way replies saying she better not say such shit again otherwise people get mad there, so all the effort Dixie makes to show her as a bad person is actually just showing Dixie is the real villain all along.
I feel like I’m shooting on the ambulance by being so critical, this novella has such few reviews and it’s not the best to have a negative one in the mix, but I just couldn’t keep it in. Maybe the book continues with a complete change of Dixie’s personality and a looooot of growth, but I am not eager to stick around to see that happen.