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Book Review: The Absence of Color



I love time travel romance. I love time travel stories. However I do not like it when it takes more than a third of the book to get to the time travel. I really don’t like it when it takes more than a third of the book to introduce the love interest.

I can’t even tell you what this story was about because it literally was a mish-mash of everyday life punctuated by micro-aggression after micro aggression.

Yeah. It’s that bad.


The author states that she has been published by major publishing houses including Avon and Random House, I want to know how much they’ve lowered their standards. Because if this book is indicative of what the publishers deem as good, then I’m clearly going to be avoiding anything coming out of their houses for the foreseeable future. It is not good. The writing is bland. Boring. Tepid. The characters are so forgettable that less than a week after reading this book, I can’t remember anything about them other than how annoyed I was with this.  There are teenagers on AO3 who write better prose – and I’m likely insulting those teenagers. I’m sorry.


And then we get into why I noped out of the book. The book is filled with language that is full of micro aggressions toward people of African-American descent and full of harmful stereotypes for People of Color. Things like calling an African-American woman’s hair wild or messy and unkempt. Things like using food descriptors to describe persons of color – stop using chocolate or coffee to describe Black skin. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Things like Portraying African-American men as players and not good fathers and absentee fathers.



The book is sexist and misogynistic as well. The author tries so hard to portray Diamond and her white mother as so special that she goes out of her way to put down other women. Every other woman – especially Women of Color – Diamond meets. She insults people who wear make up. She insults those who don’t have perfect skin. She insults those who wear body con clothing. Frankly if someone wants to wear make up or not that’s their choice. If someone wants to wear body con clothing that is their choice. Stop policing people’s fashion choices. It’s not cool. It’s racist. It’s fatophobic. It’s classist. Stop it.


Ultimately I couldn’t finish this book. I didn’t even make it a third of the way through. . It’s not worth my time DNF One star


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