The Trial of the Lovebird Butcher by Lumen Reese

Our biggest thanks to the author for asking us to read her book! It releases May 13, 2021 at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1077013.

Firstly, this book opens with a statement against Jeff Bezos and Amazon and I stan. I’ve been avoiding spending money on Amazon as much as possible due to their horrific employment practices and their iron fist over small businesses. It’s not hard to shake it’s noose and it feels pretty damn good supporting local and small businesses.

I give quitting Amazon: ⭐⭐🖕⭐⭐.

Now to Edward Fox, the Lovebird Butcher:

This book is part crime novel, part fantasy. It’s LONG but switches between POVs six times. The author was very clever in that four of these POVs are in 3rd person omniscient and two of them are in first person and those two sections are the most closely knit characters.

This book follows the trial of Edward Fox, who allegedly killed three young women. We come to learn that this flawed man has magical powers and that others of his kind are evil; he is not. The women he allegedly killed were in bad situations, on the edge of life, and he helped them.

The story flows between Maggie, a private investigator, Ben, Edward’s counsel, Edward himself, Horatio, the judge in the case, and a final NO SPOILERS character. The way that the character’s lives are intertwined and the roll out of the story of each of these missing women is a compelling read.

TRIGGER WARNING: allusions to sexual assault, suicidal thoughts, and a moment of gore.

I do have some critical thoughts though:

This book has made me consider the line between author and character. If a character says or thinks something that could be construed as bias, where does that line reach the author? If a character doesn’t say or think something but the text has some bias in it, does that belong to the author? Let me give some examples. The first happens when Maggie, the PI, refers to Ben, a young black lawyer as “boy.” With anti-racism discussions on the rise, this rankled me, especially because Maggie never makes another seemingly biased comment for the rest of the book. Also, one of the big themes of this book is that Edward saved all these women of different races: the white male savior, and that these women might not have gone on to be the amazing people that they are if he hadn’t intervened. Another rankling. I’m sure this book passes the Bechtel test, but all I can remember is everyone talking about Edward.

Lastly, another major theme towards the end of the book is that pain is the woman’s armor, her birthright, and where she derives her strength. I don’t believe this. I believe that pain is the byproduct of white patriarchal systems, people not taught the value and importance of empathy, and now that generational trauma weighs on every woman so heavily that it’s become the norm, become liveable. I don’t want my mantle of womanhood to be pain. I want the opposite of pain. I want the freedom from pain because of my sex. -Ford