Although they only cropped up several times in the novel, these issues seriously dampened my enjoyment of the book and I think it needs a number of TWs adding in before the very first page.
Other issues were several unhealthy relationships between characters that bordered on abusive, rape jokes – “Nicky’s scheming to rape Neil” – and one character’s mental health issues being trivialised as “a little bit crazy”. To me, using a slur shows a lack of empathy and an inherent bias or event hatred towards a marginalised group, and I see enough of this in real life go unchallenged, so I just wanted to see more stance against it in the book. Instead one of the adult characters uses similar slurs. It would have been less malign to have one of the adult characters challenge the teenagers’ language, but this never happens. But the slurs in the Foxhole Court were normalised by the other characters, rather than being challenged, and they existed only to show how these characters were ‘damaged’ and ‘flawed’. That’s the writer calling out problems and expressing how damaging they are. When writers use slurs to foreground certain social issues, and draw the reader out of their comfort zone to showing why said issue is not acceptable, that’s a positive way of tackling inequalities and injustice. I feel very conflicted about this book because the characters were dynamic and the storytelling addictive, but there were a number of abelist and homophobic slurs that I just couldn’t get past. Neil signs a contract to play for the team, knowing it’s the last thing he should do when trying to stay under the radar, but he’s draw in by their leading player Kevin, a figure from his old life he wants to know the other player better, but he can’t tell him who he really is. But that all changes when the Foxes of Palmetto State University scout him for their Exy team. Neil is on the run from his murderous father, never staying in one place for too long, never settling down and making friends. Hope was a dangerous, disquieting thing, but he thought perhaps he liked it.
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