The Only Good Indians

4/5.

This novel was really good. I didn't even have any kind of high expectations apart from excitement, but they were still exceeded.

I'm not sure if I'm really the right person to write a review of this book, since I'm not a Native American/a part of an Indigenous group, and my knowledge of Indigenous people definitely isn't the best. But I still found it enjoyable, even if there were a couple of moments when I was confused - mainly at the start of the book and the first 1/3rd of it. I found even that valuable to me, since my confusion highlighted the areas where my knowledge is lacking, so I'll definitely re-read this book in the future, as well as look into external sources to learn more. Due to my own shortcomings, I'm currently unable to give this book five stars.(I also read it while I was sick, which might've contributed to that.)

The characters are written exceptionally well, at least in my eyes. Almost everyone, apart from young children/teens, weren't good people. They made mistakes, committed atrocities, but the author still manages to make us feel sad for them. Another, perhaps, underlying thing that I got from the characters(I'm not sure if I'm making baseless assumptions here, I hope I'm not), was that they felt a certain confusion with who they are. Whether leaving their tribe was the right thing to do, and how much of a Native American/Indigenous person they are. Again, I might be wrong, and it's more important to listen to the voices of people who know more, and who are a part of this community.

The last thing I want to touch on is the horror, how well it's done. It's not comedic and over the top(those have their place too), but it's instead a more dreadful, suspenseful and sorrowful kind of horror. Through 2/3rds of the book it's been sprinkled in-between lighter moments, which really beautifully highlights that dread, suspense, sorrow and horror. At the end, those feelings were more constant without light-hearted moments breaking that up, and it really put me on the edge of my seat. Overall, the pacing was excellent, in my opinion.

Slight addition: I saw some people express their confusion with the inclusion of basketball. While it wasn't my personal favorite element of the book, due to me not knowing much about it, I still believe that it has purpose. A long time ago, I read that basketball is a popular sport within Native American communities, and that there are a lot of professional basketball players who are Native American. Due to this prior information, the inclusion of this sport made sense to me, but I can see why it might confuse some people.