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TinaNoir

Tina's Reading Books

Genre fiction lover:  Romance, Sci Fi, Fantasy, Mystery, Urban Fantasy

Incarcerated

Incarcerated - Inger Iversen

So what happens when an avowed racist white inmate finds out the woman he has been exchanging letters with (and falling in love with) via a pen pal program is black?

That question gets answered in this book. Kinda.

I found the premise interesting and the writing to be clean. It was engaging and I found Katie to be a sympathetic heroine.

More problematic was Logan. For a racist he is remarkably bad at it. Honestly, he couldn't really get his back into it, really. For Logan, his brand of racism feels more like something he learned by rote and circumstance, rather than something he truly internalized. He begins to fall in love with Katie in her letters and once he discovers she is black, he takes a moment to be shocked and dismayed... but then she's pretty! So he can get over it.

The book succeeds in what it attempts, meaning it took it's own premise and made it work. By not making Logan this bone-deep racist in the first place, the ease with which he reconciles himself to being with Katie doesn't feel so unbelievable.

On the one hand, since I don't tend to like my leisure, escapist reading to spend too much time on people navel gazing about race, I bought what this book was selling.

On the other hand, I can't help but wonder how much more affecting and powerful the story could have been if the author had allowed Logan's racism to go deeper than his epidermis?

In any case this was an quick and interesting read.