Rainbow Black Review
*NetGalley arc review*
Definitely look up Trigger warnings going into this book as far as explicit content and SA.

I was really excited to get into this book upon receiving it! It’s right up my alley as far as what I’ve been reading and intrigued by.
This book follows our main character Lacey in the midst of a sexual assault trial during the satanic panic. Multiple witnesses have come forward with vivid memories of her parents assaulting them and having them perform rituals. Her parents owned a children’s daycare center and the victims all say Lacey was always in the room screaming tied to a chair but she couldn’t remember it. There is so much that happens in this book that will keep you entertained all through out!

- “children lie about puppies and nintendos. They don’t lie about rape” THIS LINE!!!! So true
- “As if no one could imagine the purpose of killing a woman if you didn’t at least try to rape her first” !!!!!!

I loved this story, it was such a rollercoaster! The setting and character development were also so perfect for the time period!

Hello Satanic Panic! Lacey has grown up in New Hampshire with her hippie parent and the hippie ways. One day her life changes forever when her parents are arrested for their treatments to kids at their daycare. Lacey runs away and starts over, but she doesnt quite get fully away. The past will forever haunt her.

I so deeply wanted to love this book, but found myself feeling quite neutral upon finishing. The writing is fantastic and the narrator's voice is distinct and witty. The author does a fantastic job of capturing the essence and nostalgia of the time period. It's deliciously sapphic and captures the energy of young, coming-out desire without knowing or understanding how.

However, and this might be personal preference, all of the characters are so morally grey that I couldn't root for or relate to anyone. I was craving some level of personal connection between the characters, and I couldn't find any. The story started off strong, but quickly lost its pacing, and without the drive of person connection or relationships that you wanted to see succeed — it just fell flat for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for providing me with an advance review copy.

I did not expect a book about a child caught in the crossfire of Satanic Panic allegations to have so many hilarious, insightful moments. My heart broke for teenage Lacey over and over again, but for all its heartbreak, Rainbow Black balances it out with 90s nostalgia, a boatload of colorful characters, and little witticisms that actually made me cackle.

The second half of the books definitely took quite a turn and even though it didn't have the ending I wanted, I can still appreciate it. It is certainly less of a "murder mystery" and more of an exploration of freedom, Lacey's motivations, and queer love.

I posted my review to Goodreads on January 8th, 2024. I have provided a link to my review below.

Here is the text of my review:

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for providing me with an ARC of this book.

I am a huge fan of Maggie Thrash’s previous works. I understood going into Rainbow Black that it would be a departure from her YA titles, as this is her adult debut and it tackles darker themes. I knew that I would either absolutely love or strongly dislike this book, and I prepared myself to have low expectations.

And then the first 25% of this book had to go and remind me why I love her books in the first place. It was tragic and funny all at the same time, with quirky characters who had believable relationships with each other. I enjoyed reading about Lacey and her sister dealing with the fallout of their parents’ court case. It was upsetting, but their relationship and humor lent a sort of hopeful levity to the story that kept the novel from being unbearable to read.

And that hope mixed with tragedy is a major reason why I love Maggie Thrash’s YA books and graphic memoirs. Her books aren’t happy, but she has mastered the careful balance of providing readers with a drop of hope among the sadness in her novels that is inspiring. It’s barely anything, certainly not enough to outweigh the suffering, but it’s enough for readers to feel slightly okay. It’s realistic, because in the real world there’s always something to poke fun at or push us to keep going when we are dealing with tough times. Plus, the irreverent humor innate to her YA writing is genuinely some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever read. I went through a lot between the ages of 13 and 14, and the Strange Truth duology as well as Honor Girl and Lost Soul, Be at Peace helped me to find a light in the darkness.

In Rainbow Black, however, Thrash’s former trademark “suffering can coexist with hope” writing style is replaced with “life’s a bitch and then you die” nihilism. I’m disappointed that this incredible shift in her writing is already getting Rainbow Black more 5 star ratings than her other books have. I understand that life can devastate a human being, but I still don’t think it’s realistic to write a character study where the suffering never ends and there is no reprieve from it. Even during the darkest periods of my life, there has always been a glimmer of hope, even if it was only there for a second. Rainbow Black takes away that glimmer, that aspect of Thrash’s writing that made it realistic and made me feel attached to her work and her characters.

The plot of this book (without spoilers) can be summarized in this cycle: hope is given to Lacey and then taken away, over and over again, to the point where the plot is entirely predictable. The book ends on a slightly different note, but it doesn’t make up for the rest of the plot. During the flash forward to the 2006 timeline, the hope and “good times” Lacey had between the 90s and the 2000s are summarized and the reader is placed directly into another cycle of Lacey having problems. Her transition from being friends with Gwen to being in a relationship with Gwen is also summarized after the time jump, leading me to feel nothing for the romantic aspect of Lacey’s life because I only got to see the relationship problems Lacey and Gwen were having, not any great moments they shared.

In Thrash’s YA title Strange Truth, the relationship development between the two main characters was organic and well-built. Since I know Thrash can build character relationships well, I’m disappointed that she didn’t do the same with Lacey and Gwen here.

I can appreciate dark literary fiction books that detail extreme trauma happening to the main character repeatedly. I appreciate them when the main character is written in an empathetic, unflinching way that allows readers to see inside their mind and understand them. Lacey in Rainbow Black reads like a character whose trauma response was used as an excuse to not delve deeper into her psyche. Her character motivations are told, not shown.

Lacey is intentionally written to be immature. I understand this choice, but her immaturity is unabating in a way that makes it difficult to connect with her.

Rainbow Black is incredibly dull. I don’t mind a slow-moving plot if the characters and their relationships are compelling, but the book largely focuses on Lacey and Gwen’s relationship, and their romantic relationship development is summarized.

If you’re looking for a book that is “part murder mystery, part gay international fugitive love story,” look elsewhere. Yes, this book technically has these elements, but the blurb implies that this book is pulse-pounding and full of twists and turns. Instead, Rainbow Black is simply a 416-page chronicle of the same depressing cycle repeating over and over until the end, which doesn’t make up for it in my opinion. I don’t even care that the blurb is misleading, because if this book had been like Honor Girl or Lost Soul, Be at Peace I still would’ve liked it.

In conclusion, I would argue that most people in the world suffer enough to not want to read about it if it isn’t a balanced depiction. I would also argue that a lot of the people who enjoyed this book are mesmerized by the novelty of the brand of suffering present in this book, and therefore rated it highly.

Maggie Thrash’s previous books made me feel seen and hopeful in a way I can’t even quantify. I’m sure they made others feel seen as well. If I read Rainbow Black instead of her other books, I would have felt even more grim about my own life.

I did appreciate some of Thrash’s wit, which will always be present in her writing. And the end scene with the bee farm finally felt compelling, since it focused on Lacey’s other relationships outside of Gwen.

Overall, though, if I knew that this book would be written in an unbalanced, hopeless manner, I wouldn’t have picked it up.

The beginning …..as in about the first entire half….is remarkable and affecting ….
….building the storytelling….the mystery and our emotions equally…..
….and overall this is an exceptional first adult novel from a passionate gifted author. While my heart was invested in the characters wellness….I was also wishing to give Maggie Thrash a big hug of congratulations. There are a few places in the middle of this novel that felt a little disjointed from the whole …. yet it was easy to forgive …. because the many issues and themes Maggie covers are sincerely vital for all of us to examine.
Be it morality, justice, confusion, emptiness, molestation, parenting, family, love, friendships….etc.

Here are a couple of excerpts…..to get your juices going:
“Dad leapt out of the van. ‘Get in now’, he barked at us, and we obeyed. Everything felt confused, and I didn’t know what scared me most, hoodlums, missing, moms, dope fiends, the man with the switchblade—they are mixed together in the darkness”.

“Lacey,
……”life is an art, not a science. Facts don’t exist. Just live in the moment”.
“While these pseudo-philosophical question-avoiding tactics worked on a ten-year-old, they would later do her incredible damage. You can’t tell law enforcement officers, a judge, and a jury that facts don’t exist”.
“I couldn’t wait to tell Eclair what had happened. The story contained so many motifs from her beloved ‘’Days of Our Lives’: a damsel, a hero, gunshots, fainting, an array of mysterious strangers. Once a month, I was allowed a very expensive long-distance call with her in Miami”.
“But when I told her the story, her reaction was not at all what I hoped”.
“Eclair, did you hear what I said? There was a gunshot. And dad was carrying Mom and she was ‘unconscious’. And the manager was screaming. Every bad word I’ve ever heard”.

A book worth reading…..
….filled with pain, perseverance, and hope.

1990s Satanic Panic !? Hippies in New Hampshire ?! Yes PLEASE. absolutely loved this story. So excited for more people to read it!

Rainbow Black is a dark and haunting novel sure to leave you eternally frustrated with the dichotomy of someone being fully innocent of blame, but so visibly easy to pin guilt upon. It was tender and trying and tough, and I enjoyed every second.

I have to admit, I read Maggie Thrash's autobiographical graphic novel Honor Girl a bit earlier this year so when I saw that she was releasing a novel, I knew I had to grab it. What I knew before going into this was that Maggie has an excellent talent for vivisection of an individual and Rainbow Black was no exception to that rule and may be one of the most loving, introspective treatments of a character I've read in a long time.

This book takes place in New England in the 90's, set at Lacey's parents in-home daycare. Lacey's a young teen when her parents are arrested, accused of being both satanists and pedophiles and of hurting dozens of kids in their charge. Satanic Panic stories are interesting to me - often fueled by immense amounts of attention from the public and therapists leading young children into telling stories that never actually happened. This book goes into a massive amount of depth of how that impacted Lacey and her sister Eclair, how the public speculation impacted the perspectives people had on them, how Lacey's burgeoning sexuality is exploited by social workers, lawyers, etc. and used as "proof" that she's concealing memories of her parents' possible crimes.

It'd be hard to call Lacey's life anything but cursed - at at time when it was tough to come to terms with your queer identity and the way people viewed queerness (thought it was interesting how attitudes in the early 90's were juxtaposed with gay marriage being legalized in Canada vs. America's violent attitudes toward... well, anything that wouldn't be qualified as the "american dream" of heteronormativity) she was getting shit on by her classmates, watching her parents going through a trial both in an actual court and the court of public opinion, then trying to navigate the world as best as she can as a teenager that's forced away from everything she's ever known and into a group home where every person that's meant to take care of her fails - either via ineptitude, hatred, or because they're the real predators.

Also want to say this included a lovely sapphic romance between Lacey and her childhood friend Dylan, whose journey with gender is also explored - we see Lacey go through learning about what it means for Dylan to be trans and accepting her for who she is, perhaps because so much of her identity has been commodified for the trial. Lacey is fiercely loyal to Dylan and we see how that grows after a time jump - Lacey and Dylan (now Jo & Gwen) flee to Canada after they decide to take matters into their own hands with Dylan's abusive older brother.

I loved Lacey. I loved that Lacey realized that even if she made all the right choices, it didn't mean that life would reward her for them. In the end, Lacey was a character that life happened to, and all that she wanted was to be free and happy. She's so easy to root for because reading this book really makes you think about the way that life takes, the way that we're all just doing our best, and the way that even if we make the wrong choices, sometimes we just want to take control of our lives via whatever means necessary. What a great, great, thoughtful read.

Rainbow Black perfectly blends a murder mystery, a queer love story, a thriller, and an exploration of identity and societal norms. Maggie Thrash takes us on a journey through the chaos of the '90s Satanic Panic, offering a narrative that is as thought-provoking as it is thrilling.

As the world tumbles into rampant accusations and fear, we follow Thrash's protagonist, Lacey Bond, as she grows up in the height of this hysteria, discovering her identity as a queer person. Thrash beautifully represents this without holding back on the realities of a lived queer experience.

Rainbow Black does more than just tell a story; it challenges the reader to consider the parallels between past and present attitudes towards identities and queerness. Thrash's insightful narrative also invites us to ponder the evolution of representation in literature, by presenting a fully developed main character with unavoidable flaws.

The courtroom drama elements add a layer of intensity to the narrative, while the exploration of Lacey's personal growth and her interactions within this charged environment is handled well.

Maggie Thrash's Rainbow Black is a must-read for anyone seeking new voices and representations within the thriller and murder mystery genres.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

I have loved Maggie Thrash's work for many years, specifically her amazing graphic novels. I was very excited to receive this ARC! I really enjoy mixing coming of age stories with a compelling thriller and this one did not disappoint. Up until the very did it left me compelled to keep moving the pages forward. This was set against the backdrop of the 90s Satanic Panic with a nice murder mystery mixed in. I read another thriller set during 90s Satanic Panic this year and it did not compare to this one. I am looking forward to more from Thrash in the future.

DNF at 32%. I enjoyed the first 10% of this. It has a first chapter that grabs you, and then a compelling dilemma for this family.

However, I think this is more queer coming of age story than thriller. Being limited to Lacey’s POV was frustrating as someone interested in the details of the court case. The case isn’t the focus of the story, which is fair, I was just way less interested in her coming of age. That’s pretty low on my list in terms of type of novels I enjoy.

The writing is very easy to read but doesn’t feel basic. I think if you would enjoy a coming of age story that involves *some* mystery/thriller elements and some dark themes, you should check this one out.

I loved this book. The story follows a woman’s life from young adulthood to her thirties. The first half of the book felt like a coming of age story mixed with an episode of Law and Order SVU. I thought it was really well written and I couldn’t put it down.

Most of this book was interesting and hard to talk about without spoilers, at time it felt overly long, it was mostly stream of consciousness of the main character, who is memorable for many reasons, so the depth portrait of her was the driving force behind the story. Worth the read

Where to begin!? I couldn’t sleep one night, decided to start this and I couldn’t put it down. I thought this was really well written, and paced nicely! The first 2/3 of book really drew me in. The last third of the story, when it first started made me a little less connected to story/ disoriented given the shift in setting, language used and large gap in time. But overall I liked it and enjoyed the way the genres were blended - a balance of memoir, true crime, satanic panic, murder mystery and coming of age vibes.

Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash is an utterly captivating book that delves into the realms of love, redemption, and courage. It serves as a poignant condemnation of mob mentality, resonating profoundly with the issues we face in our present times.

In this enthralling narrative, Thrash skillfully weaves a tale that explores the complexities of human emotions and the power of personal growth. The story not only captivates the reader's imagination but also offers a thought-provoking reflection on the dangers of blindly following the crowd.

Moreover, Rainbow Black possesses a remarkable relevance to our contemporary society. It sheds light on the pressing issues we confront today, urging us to question the influence of mob mentality and encouraging us to embrace individuality and critical thinking.

Thrash's writing style is both eloquent and engaging, effortlessly drawing readers into the intricate web of emotions and experiences that her characters navigate. Through her vivid descriptions and masterful storytelling, she paints a vivid picture of the struggles and triumphs that unfold within the pages of this remarkable book.

Rainbow Black is an extraordinary literary work that not only entertains but also enlightens. It serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of love, redemption, and courage in the face of adversity. Thrash's ability to address the perils of mob mentality with such relevance to our current times is truly commendable. This book is a must-read for those seeking a captivating and thought-provoking exploration of the human spirit.

A Journey with Mixed Feelings: A 3-Star Review of "Rainbow Black"
"Rainbow Black" by Maggie Thrash is a book I genuinely wanted to love. It tackles complex themes and offers a narrative that promises depth and emotional resonance. However, despite its potential, the book and I didn't quite click, mainly due to the writing style.

The Good
The story dives into intricate themes that resonate with contemporary issues, especially those surrounding queer identities. The characters are well-crafted, each with their own set of complexities that make them feel real. The plot itself is engaging, offering a rollercoaster of emotions that keeps you invested in the characters' journeys.

The Not-So-Good
While the story and characters were compelling, the writing style was a hurdle for me. It felt somewhat disjointed, making it challenging to fully immerse myself in the narrative. This is purely a matter of personal preference, but it did affect my overall reading experience.

The Verdict
"Rainbow Black" is a book that will likely resonate with many, but it wasn't entirely my cup of tea. I appreciate the depth and the themes it explores, but the writing style kept me at arm's length. Hence, I'm giving it a solid 3 stars. It's worth a read, but be prepared for a writing style that may not be everyone's taste.

This novel is a journey! Mostly stylized as a memoir, this felt like a dark, deep character study more than anything else. What happens when all the systems that are supposed to be in place to support and protect youth not only fail them but actively harm them? The Satanic panic in the 1980s was very real, and it did ruin many lives and traumatize countless others. Without being sensationalist, this story looks at how traumatic events like that are more than just a headline for those who live with them. It is painful, sometimes graphic, and feels authentic and honest. Some reviews highlight this as a thriller, which I suppose isn’t wrong, but it feels more like footage from a car accident in slow motion. The interior perspective clues us in right away that things aren’t great, and probably won’t get better.

I don’t know if I’m doing this story justice, here. I really, really enjoyed the writing style. The dialogue all felt genuine, the prose direct and to the point, and compelling. Since finishing it I have been contemplating what was gained and lost from the memoir-style of writing, and I do think I would have enjoyed it more without that edifice, if we didn’t have the occasional jumps into the future, but I’m not sure. It feels like the structure, which isn’t particularly novel, is doing some of the heavy lifting, and there might be more interesting character growth to witness if this style wasn’t used. But having said that, I think the conventions of the format were well-employed. It was really hard to put down and the chapters all ended with just the right amount of tension that I really had to just keep going but never felt like I was being manipulated. It is weird to talk about world-building, since this is set in the real world, among real life events, but it is still appropriate, I think, because the author has done a great job of situating this story in placer and time. The semi-rural New England setting, the relationships with sibling, parents, and classmates, all the little bits and pieces, they really are great. They help this story feel real, and that makes the stakes, the danger, feel that much more immediate.

Ultimately, the central character and her story is tragic, regardless of any personal growth or catharsis that may or may not come by the end. Although a very specific story rooted in a very specific cultural event, this type of trauma and violence is still felt by queer youth today, and that touchstone with contemporary reality really made me invested in the characters. I found the primary character really engaging, the story stirred all sorts of emotions from frustration and rage to fear, concern, and overwhelming empathy, and the writing strong and perfectly matched with the subject matter and story. Some parts in the beginning were a little drawn out for me, and I am still on the fence about how this story might have hit without the memoir-style format to fall back on, but those are minor quibbles. I really enjoyed this book—I tore through it, and it not provoked genuine emotion but also forced me to investigate my own ideas of morality and justice. I haven’t read the author’s other work, but as far as an adult-fiction debut goes this is amazing, and it makes me excited to see what else she will do.

I want to thank the author, the publisher Harper Perennial, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Such an interesting read! Loved the more memoir perspective of it! Jo was a very interesting character, and I loved the interactions between the couple as well! More of a slow burn, but well written and kept me engaged the entire book!