Jabberwocky Reviews

9: Quiet by JonLeePeto

@JonLeePeto Quiet

"After a near death experience, 16-year old Makiko Lombardi's celebrity father comes to Tokyo, but Makiko hasn't met him for almost seven years. To please her mother, Makiko refuses to see him.

Ashamed about not speaking her mind, Makiko admires Cynthia, an old friend who helps teenage runaways exploited by Yakuza gangsters. When Yakuza follow them, both girls assume Cynthia's in danger, but someone powerful has a problem with Makiko's father and sees Makiko as a pawn.

Meanwhile, neither girl believes rumors that a demon stalks and kills runaways. Until something sinister kills Yakuza outside Makiko's house, and a survivor warns her that the demon "likes" her.

***

A first boyfriend.

Yakuza with unknown plans.

A killer demon who "likes" her.

What's a quiet girl to do?

Will be added to @StoriesUndiscovered reading lists for May, 2022!

Added to @Paranormal Paranormal Paramours list in April, 2022

Notable Rankings:

#1 meet-cute (March 14, 2022)

#2 exploitation (April 2, 2022)"

Where do I begin? There's a lot to unpack in this book, and this will be a very long review. Buckle up, since this is going to be a ride, and you're stuck with me whether you like it or not.

Before I read your blurb, I checked out your profile, as I think is standard for this sort of deal. One thing I noticed was this: "The female lead, 16-year-old Makiko Lombardi, may not start out strong, but she responds to circumstances!". This strikes me as a very odd description, mainly because it connotes passivity—and passive protagonists are rarely what we want to read about. This passivity comes up again when in the blurb you mention how ashamed Makiko is about "speaking her mind," and this was a red flag for me in how I expected you to portray your female characters. We're going to talk a lot more about this when we get to your book itself. One other thing: please don't list "exploitation" as a tag. That's also a giant red flag to me. Details like this convey a lack of tact or care about how others may read your writing differently than what you, as the author, intended.

Your blurb begins with a dangling modifier—does she or her father have the near-death experience? Is this the impetus for her father visiting? Or perhaps why the Yakuza have a problem with her father? These details combine to make me expect some sort of criminal thriller, and then we take a turn with the demon. I'll mention more later why I found this specific plotline a bit weird, but I also want to address how the idea of this "demon," presumably a supernatural powerful entity, liking Makiko reinforces that passivity I mentioned earlier. Especially in the 21st century, people need to move away from plots that are either reliant on the female characters being "saved" by the other characters or could be read as doing so, and without even opening your book I'd be a bit concerned (note I'm writing this review after I finished your book).

The foreword (not foreward, as you wrote—typos in chapter titles are a big red flag) has an interesting paragraph in it that I read more critically given this existing content in the blurb, and what we'll talk about when we get into the book proper:

"This is not an #OwnVoices story. My characters are diverse, but I am a white, cisgender male. I was raised by a single mom, am not wealthy, and have always been relatively open-minded, but my path to enlightenment is incomplete. No need to educate me, if you don't want, but if something strikes you as boorish, feel free to give me an eye roll. I'll reflect, as best I can."