Review – Women in Gray

by KD Rye

My rating: A must-read if you love dysfunctional sapphic relationships.

A copy of the book was provided to Sapphic Book Club and I am voluntarily leaving a review.

Thank you so much to the Sapphic Book Club for providing an ARC of this book. I received the ARC in January, but only just got around to reading this. And thank you so much to Angie for the recommendation.

This book is dark. I’m always a bit sceptical when books are tagged that way in reviews/marketing, because dark can mean so many things to different people. But I definitely found this book dark in a deliciously creeping fridge horror, gothic way, where terror lies in the domestic and the familiar.

The blurb spoils the premise of the book. I am so allergic to spoilers I actually think it’s a much more rewarding experience to just read the first chapter instead—it’s available using the ‘look inside’ feature on Amazon, or the whole book is free on KU. By the end of the first chapter, you’ll know everything you need to know to figure out if this book is for you. Go on. Do it. I’ll wait.

Premise

So as the blurb and 1^st chapter makes clear, this is a mind control story. I haven’t had a lot of luck in that genre as a reader—the genre seems a little bit male-gazey for me. Maybe I’m reading the wrong stories. Anyway, I want to reassure you that this was not that. This was a dark domestic/psychological thriller. I would comp it as Black Mirror crossed with In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado.

That is, it uses a near-future setting with some weird tech, and a dysfunctional, abusive lesbian marriage. There is F/F rape in the story, although the sex scenes are largely fade to black imo and not very descriptive, which I liked and felt it suited the story. See the end of this review for more content warnings.

POV/characters

It’s told from the first person perspective of Hazel, who is the woman being mind controlled. This voice gives us a tight, at times claustrophobic feeling, as she’s forced by her wife’s (Daphne’s) mad scientist invention to do everything her wife desires, from saying ‘thank you’ to going to sleep at the right time. From the occasional well-placed flashback, we find out more about why Daphne has done the things she does, though we never get Daphne’s point of view so never find out her unvarnished opinion about it.

There’s a prominent third character/third wheel in Cameron, Hazel’s direct report at work, who’s mixed race white Irish and Puerto Rican. I liked that she couldn’t speak Spanish because we don’t always see poc who are non-fluent in their parents’ language(s), despite this being a common real-world occurrence. Daphne is white. If Hazel’s racial identity was marked, I missed it; I assumed she was white.

Themes

Marriage is hard. And while this book has a fantastical premise, it touches on the difficulties in sustaining a long-term relationship, the compromises needed, the sacrifices on both sides. That doesn’t excuse Daphne’s actions, of course, but she did have my sympathy on occasion.

I think in order for these stories to work, the reader really has to engage with the subject matter—like, would you ever want to install a chip on your partner’s head and control their every movement? Probably not, but haven’t we all wanted someone to behave the way we desired, if only briefly? And what does that say about us? Only that we’re human.

Ending

The ending has a gut punch I didn’t see coming. It’s so incredibly dark, and what makes it darker is that KD could easily have chosen to end things differently, but the way it does end is just so perfect. It made me think about what is justice, what is love; I feel like I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time.

Warnings

This book comes with a content warning which I didn’t find comprehensive. It’s a difficult balance, trying to provide enough context for warnings, trying not to spoiler people, and trying not to get shoved into the Amazon erotica dungeon, or getting banned from ads, getting book banned, or worst of all, getting perma-author banned—all these things behind the scenes that most people probably don’t know about, but are crucial to indie/small press authors—anyway, KD has my sympathies. But here are some additional warnings from my point of view (minor spoilers):

Summary

This book was dark, thrilling, horrible. 5 stars. If you love my work, you might love this, too.