THE BASICS
- Title: White Fur
- Author: Jardine Libaire
- Genre: Romantic Contemporary Fiction
- Structure: Interchanging third-person character perspectives
- First Line: “Outside their motel window, Wyoming is lurid with sunset.”
Synopsis: When Elise Perez meets Jamey Hyde on a desolate winter afternoon, fate implodes, and neither of their lives will ever be the same. Although they are next-door neighbors in New Haven, they come from different worlds. Elise grew up in a housing project without a father and didn’t graduate from high school. Jamey is a junior at Yale, heir to a private investment bank fortune and beholden to high family expectations. The attraction is instant, and what starts out as sexual obsession turns into something greater, stranger, and impossible to ignore.
The unlikely couple moves to Manhattan in hopes of forging an adult life together, but Jamey’s family intervenes in desperation, and the consequences of staying together are suddenly severe. And when a night out with old friends takes a shocking turn, Jamey and Elise find themselves fighting not just for their love but also for their lives.
THE GOOD
If I’m being completely honest (as per usual), this book wasn’t for me. I think other people would definitely enjoy it and think it’s great, but I wasn’t completely sold. I’ll go into that more in the next section and, for now, go into what I did like.
- I truly enjoyed Libaire’s writing. I thought it was well-done and enamoring. She really took her time to nail down her prose and it shows. There’s also not a lot of fluff. You are told what you need to know without filler, which is great.
- The characters are brutally honest in a way that is rarely seen. It’s the type of honesty where you can feel like a character is endearing one minute and a disturbing disaster the next. I loved it because it made them more relatable and interesting.
THE UNFAVORABLE BITS
The main reason why I made the comment that this book isn’t for me (but could be for others) is that it was way too raunchy for my taste. I think it was unfortunate how many explicit (as in lots of detail) moments were in this book because I felt like it cheapened the plot. It read more like a written porno than a love story.
The Puerto Rican stereotypes are borderline offensive. In creative writing, authors will create “tropes”, which is a fancy way of saying that they create a standard character (essentially a stereotype) while making the character unique and not actually playing into stereotypes. I would say the main character, Elise, is more of stereotype than a trope and I have seen reviews from Puerto Ricans claiming that it comes off offensive. Not cool.
The plot is predictable. I’m not going to put in any spoilers! But you’ve read it before. I pretty much knew how it was going to end 20 pages in, which makes it a bit of boring read for me.
As usual, I let you know about profanity. I already mentioned my point about the raunchiness. There is a lot of profanity as well. This is definitely an adult only book.
CONCLUSION
I give this book 2/5 stars. I think Jardine Libaire is a fantastic writer and her work really shows. But I think the raunchiness of the book cheapened her writing and the plot. There was not much substance to the story. I think the amount of sex displayed in the book was to cover up the lack of depth to the story and her characters. Overall, I could see some people enjoying this book, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea.
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I received White Fur from the Book of the Month Club for June 2017. It was so great to receive personalized book recommendations at my doorstep! Honestly, I’m not sure if I would’ve picked up and experienced White Fur if it wasn’t for BOTM. You can join the club here for under $15 a month!
*Thank you Book of the Month Club for sponsoring this. All opinions are my own.