Black Iris by Leah Raeder

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Black Iris by Leah Raeder


                Laney Keating has been called many things: a slut, a queer, a fag, a dyke, a bitch. She has been laughed at humiliated, manipulated and set up. She is our unreliable narrator. And Laney makes it very clear from the beginning that this isn’t the story about how she changed. There will be no forgiveness. She’s been hurt and she plans on hurting those people that have hurt her. This is a love story. This a revenge story.
                This is really freaking complicated and intense. Oh, Laney. How dark and twisted you are. How corrupt, headstrong and bent on getting what you want. How damn well written and believably deranged. Raeder has done it again. Black Iris introduces yet another anti-hero that you want to root for because you understand that some wounds never heal. Sometime inflicting pain is the only thing that makes you feel better. This novel is insane and yet it works. Why? (Because Raeder can do no wrong.) Because Raeder understands what it’s like to be misunderstood and can construct a novel around that pain. There was never a point while reading this novel that I didn’t like Laney. To like her I would have to be able to understand her and that was impossible. Between the drugs, the manipulation and her love life everything was just complicated but that’s what made this novel so good. Raeder places the reader in Laney’s head and the chaos inside is unimaginable.

                After reading Unteachable I knew I loved Raeder as a writer. She simple understands how to write about dark, complicated, female characters in a way I haven’t necessarily seen before. I love that. I love her writing style because it’s intense, descriptive and poetic. I don’t know how she does it but I love it. Black Iris gets 4.5 out of 5 stars for me and the reason is simple. The narrative is told in a past to present format that happened so often it became distracting. Part of me wants to read it again chronologically just to see what that would be like. As much as I love Raeder I see how she can be a miss for some readers. She writes about topics that can make some people uncomfortable. Unteachable was about a complicated teacher/student relationship. Black Iris deals with sexual identity in a very complicated, intense and yet brutally honest way. Not to mention the fact that both Laney and Maise were unapologetically bad ass female characters. In my opinion Raeder is the bee’s knees and I am perpetually fan. If you can handle her then go for it. 

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