CONTENT WARNINGS: Drugs/Drug use, Sex/Sexual situations (some mentioned/involving people under 18), Dubious consent, physical assault, violence including gun violence, abortion (as a procedure performed in story with some detail of the event)
I will not go into specific detail on these topics, but they may be mentioned in this review. These themes/instances are unavoidable in the book
Rating: 1.5/5
Three books in. Only three and we’ve come to the first one that had me second guessing this entire exercise. Or at the very least, tossing out the “finish at all costs” mentality I had taken to try to get through every book beginning to end. Before I go any further into this, I feel like it’s important to say that all forms of media have a target audience, and books are no exception. I’m a queer, white, middle-class person from the small town outside of Chicago that Svengoolie makes jokes about on his D-List horror movie review show (bonus points if you get that reference and know the town). My favorite authors are Tamora Pierce and Stephen King. My favorite books I’ve read in the last five years are The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison and The Fifth Season by N.K.Jemisin. All this to say, I am not Sister Souljah’s target audience for The Coldest Winter Ever. And that’s totally all right; every book isn’t for every person. However when I tell you it took me months, six if I’m being generous, I’m not exaggerating.
The book centers on WInter Santiaga, daughter of a drug dealer born in 1970s Brooklyn. At the story’s opening, WInter is just turning sixteen and her entire world is about to be pulled out from under her feet. A series of events leads to her father getting imprisoned for his crimes, and Winter is left to pick up the pieces of her life. Or start a new one.
Now, for as much as I found the book a struggle to get through, I did really love the character of Winter. Told in first person, we have her voice as the narrator all the way through. WInter is sharp, and sure of herself in a way that many people (myself included) can only dream of. Resourceful, no-nonsense, and loyal to a fault if she deems you worthy, you’re mostly sympathetic to her for the situation that she’s in. Note that I say mostly.
There are multiple occasions that Winter is given an out. She’s handed opportunities to change her circumstances, and reform herself into whatever she could want to be. But what she wants is to remain the daughter of Brooklyn drug king Ricky Santiaga and queen of the block. What starts as confidence and a sense of self turns into stubbornness and someone who has been spoiled her whole life. And it becomes absolutely exhausting, my sympathy turning into annoyance by the end of the novel.
Sister Souljah’s amazing ability to write this character, to give her a voice and make her feel so real can’t be understated here. I liked the character until I didn’t, and felt the same strength of opinion as it flipped one eighty. Sort of like the villain you love to hate in the story. But, since all we have are WInter’s opinions and voice, some of the other characters in her world feel less fleshed out and more one-dimensional. If the narrator of a first person story doesn’t like a character, we only see that part of them and they get less screen time so to say. And one of these non-Winter characters was what really broke the whole story for me.
Sister Souljah writes herself as a character in the book. This isn’t some metaphor for the author as a mirror of their environment and work: I’m talking literally, Sister Souljah appears in the book. The first few times she’s mentioned, I shrugged it mostly off. As an activist in the sort of community that Winter may find herself in, I can believe that maybe she would have heard of her. Maybe some of the characters would have attended a lecture or a speech off page. But Sister Souljah in the textural flesh makes an appearance. And not just a small one: She is one of the people that tries to give WInter an out and help her situation.
This wasn’t just a cheeky Deadpool-esq fourth wall breaking moment. No dramatic irony like Othello’s Iago turning to the audience and telling us his master plan. It shattered all suspensions of disbelief for me and I couldn’t recover. From that point on, the story became a chore to get through.
Just as the stubborn-self assured Winter wouldn’t safe herself from her circumstances (even at the story’s very end), she couldn’t save herself from this story absolutely falling apart for me.
Macabress Manuscripts 