u/Dismal-Alfalfa-7613

I used to be quite addicted to buying books — not necessarily reading them. Especially loved library sales. Or just adding one or two used books to get to Amazon free shipping, when I was buying soemthing else.

I was also into all that self-help stuff believing a few books would fix my issues.

It's so embarrassing but I do have 2 or 3 books the podcast talked about (some of them I even started reading).

The last book I bought was Grit, a few years back, and it was another round of embarrassment when the last episode came out.

I haven't read the book, but in the show, the way Agnes thinks about her stepmom, crushes her figure, seems like an overreaction.

It doesn't seem unnatural btw, I feel like it's normal to dislike and shit talk your step mom, but they haven't shown any horrors.

She seems genuinely interested in wanting Agnes to find a best husband, and yeah, she's not kind, and ruined that girl's tea ceremony, but that seems like her just being a bitch, not genuinely evil.

I'm wondering, if the show is doing it deliberately, showing how even in this extreme society the teenage girls would have the same issues — including the tension with their step mom, OR if the show failed to portray the step mom as evil. I'm thinking it's the former.