Book 29 - Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes

Reading date - October 2020

I went back to this review loads of times to make it a bit tamer because even though I am free to criticise books, I haven't written one myself so I can't really be too critical.  This is the toned down version..

Shite.

Utter shite.

This was hyped up so much and I cannot see why.  Dire.  Probably the worst book I've read in a long, long time.

The main "story" is that the protagonist commits suicide.  You are told this in the first chapter and within the first few pages so it's not a spoiler.  What follows is a totally pointless car-crash of so many different topics, told by so many people, over so many different time frames that it makes it difficult to put it together as one coherent story.    

This could have been great story if it didn't sweep up every single issue possible.  It may work as a film but only if certain aspects are left out.  It covers childhood abandonment, the miners strikes, undercover policing, squatters in Brixton and the protagonist just generally being a drunken mess sleeping with whoever will give her a bed for the night.  I am not one to judge, if you want to live your life this way then that is your choice. I make decisions and choices that not everyone agrees with and that's up to them.

The story goes nowhere and the author has no business trying to write in dialect as she fails both Scottish and London.  It seems as if she has seen one episode of Only Fools and Horses and has weaved that into sentences and it’s horrendous.  I have lived in south London and have never ever heard people say "intcha".  It's believable to people who haven't been to London or who don't know what a London accent sounds like, which to me is ludicrous because it's a normal accent.

The book basically follows around all the men she has fucked and the women she meets en route.  Clio, the protagonist comes across as thoroughly unlikeable person, one who is a user that gets pissed off when people get wise to what she's like.  People like this are so annoying, "oh babe, I'm so random and scatty, it's just the way I am, love me or leave me".  NO, you are annoying and need to mature. I really dislike people like that.  She gets kicked out of her mum's house when she is 16 and throughout the whole book the reader is lead to believe that she has done something really bad when all she's done is sleep with a striking miner (something we find out towards the end of the book). 

It is the kind of book that is written by someone who has seen a certain type of life from the outside and they've tried to write it as if they have experienced it first hand..it really shows that she hasn't..and that any research done is not extensive.

Don't waste your time with it.