2.1.2024 | Thursday

Comfort Me with Apples

Item: Comfort Me With Apples
Rating: 2
Author: Kim

category: Book Reviews
tag(s): adult
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title: Comfort Me With Apples
author: Catherynne M. Valente
published: 11.9.2021
publisher: Tordotcom
genre(s): fantasy, reimagining, thrillers
pages: 103
source: library
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | BookBub | BookHype | Goodreads

rating:

the blurb

Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.

It's just that he's away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.

But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband's face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can't quite meet her gaze...

But everything is perfect. Isn't it?

a few notes
review

content warning: ❗gaslighting, toxic relationship, murder, misogyny❗

POV: 3rd person
spice: 0🔥
language: 0🤬

I was made for him.

This was Sophia’s first thought each morning, one she carried with her like a mantra throughout her days. She was made for her husband, and her life was perfect. The moment any doubt crept in, she repeated the sentiment. It read very Stepford Wives. For the majority of the book, that was the sum total of her personality. Not much more can be said of the other characters with whom she spends time. It was difficult to feel terribly invested in any of the characters.

Sophia’s intense focus on everything being perfect seems to be of major concern to her neighbors, who ask her over and over again if she’s happy. At first, her answer is simple… everything’s perfect, and she’s very happy. But then a weird coworker of her husband’s (who is gone more often than he’s around) appears, and he unsettles her. Between that and the nonstop questioning by her neigbors, she begins to wonder if she is happy, if everything really is perfect.

But does she do anything about it?

spoiler

Not much. She searches the house and finds things that leave her with more questions than answers. When push comes to shove, what does she do? Meets her fate without a fight. WTAF?

The synopsis truly felt like false advertising. It read like a thriller, maybe a bit of a creepy thriller. It was neither. It’s been touted as a feminist version reimagining. Not that, either.

spoiler

It was a Adam-and-Eve story, reimagined with some Bluebeard-esque elements. It felt like the book version of a mother hiding vegetables in a kid’s dinner, slipping a Bible story into a novella. Not a fan. Nor is it a feminist version of the story. For the entire novella, Sophia is a Stepford wife. Even at the end, when she figures it all out, she goes back to him, knowing what awaits her. And she accepts it. How is that feminist?

Even beyond all of that… it had another cringey undertone. Much is made of how little Sophia is, how large the house is. Yes, that’s explained at the end. But for the majority of the novella, it really felt vaguely older man-WAY too young women.