jenny✨'s Reviews > Furia

💥 9/15/2020: Today has been a bright spot amidst some tumultuous times—happy pub day to one of my fave reads of 2020, Furia!

We’d made the space. We’d filled in the cracks of the system and made room for ourselves where there was none. No one had given us anything. We had taken it.

Goddamn, I really, really loved this book.

It’s not even fair to make the comparison, but this was everything I wanted Kulti to be. This was everything Kulti—with its slut-shaming, double standards, and unrealistic romance—could NEVER deliver. Even the two books’ titles make this point crystal clear: Zapata’s is named after the love interest, while Saied Méndez’s centres its furious, incorrigible female protagonist—Camila “Furia” Hassan.

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I think the book blurb does a really good job of summing up the main storyline, so I’m going to delve straight into the things that left an imprint on me personally.

What stood out to me above all else was Camila’s tenacity and fire. We aren’t simply told this about her—these qualities manifest in her every action and every word. Camila is unwavering in her love of fútbol and her determination to carve her own path as a professional fútbolera, apart from her father’s cruelty and the expectations forced upon her by both family and society.

I’d leave this house the first chance I got, but not by chasing after a boy, including my brother. I’d do it on my own terms, following my own dreams, not someone else’s.

Time and again, Camila chooses herself over the men in her life, including the one she loves with her whole heart.

She wants more than any man could ever give her—more than even Diego, her childhood love and now an international superstar, could provide. Camila makes some really heart-shattering decisions throughout the course of the novel that demonstrate the lengths to which she will defend herself, her mother, and the other women—named and unnamed—who have shaped her life.

At every level, Furia is an unapologetically feminist story that does not shy away from the at-times harsh realities of Argentinian women, and particularly those in Rosario’s poorer neighbourhoods. Camila’s story unfolds in a space where women are denied abortions, face emotional and physical abuse at the hands of partners and family, and continually find themselves gaslit by men for simply existing.

With poignant ferocity, this book asserts the memory and legacy of missing and murdered Argentinian women, and champions the ways in which women survive, resist, and thrive in the face of misogynistic violence.

And the women in this novel aren’t perfect. I thought this was such an important point to make: that we all find ourselves—intentionally or not—complicit in the undermining of ourselves and other women. But we all have the capacity to learn and grow, too, whether it’s Camila’s mother finally seeing Camila as someone worthy of ambition (beyond just cuffing a fútbol player) or Camila herself reflecting on the problematic way that she stereotypes botineras—baller wives—as superficial gold-diggers.

“I’m following my own path, chiquita.”
“But he’s your true love.” Karen sounded like any little girl hoping for a happily ever after. When she saw me, she saw her teacher, a role model to follow. I didn’t want her to think that to be free and happy, a woman had to turn her back on love, but I didn’t know how to do both.

There’s this AWESOME subplot that develops as Camila begins tutoring kids at a church shelter. She mentors a little girl named Karen, who has a stutter and is so fierce and devours stories and poems written by women authors. The quote I pulled above is one of my favourite scenes in the whole damn book: it captures the ambivalence that I found so real and raw about Camila’s voice.

In fact, this sort of nuance made the romance arc really compelling for me. I loved Camila and Diego together (yes, I am absolutely the biggest sucker for that trope where the childhood love becomes someone famous/successful and they have to navigate falling for each other as adults). Diego is loving and generous—and even so, Camila still holds him accountable in the moments he falls short. Sal and Kulti seriously could’ve learned a thing or sixteen from these two.

Not to mention, with lines like these, how could you NOT root for them??? I mean:

La Furia met her equal in el Titán. The latent goddess inside me pulled at her bindings until she snapped them. Together, we held on to this boy who’d come to wreck my world.

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The only part of this book I have complaints about is its length. For the most part, the pacing was perfect—but at certain crucial moments, I wished there’d been greater elaboration. I fell so hard for these characters and became incredibly invested in their storylines; I could’ve read at least another 200 pages of Camila and Roxana, Camila and Karen, Camila and her mother and brother, and of course, Camila and Diego. I REALLY hope that there’s a sequel, because I seriously miss reading about them already.

And if that hasn't convinced you: This is the first book I’ve ever pre-ordered for myself AND my best friend when I was only halfway done. That’s how much I adored it.





Thank you NetGalley and Algonquin Young Readers for this ARC in exchange for an honest review! All quotes were taken from an uncorrected reader’s proof.