Victim the debut novel by Andrew Boryga is astonishing. From the very first page you know that you are going to be pushed to look your view of the world in a differnt way. It is about two friends Javier and Gio. Thet both grow up in The Bronx. Javier is a witness to his father's death and Gio has a tough life too and ends up in prison. The book revolves around what it's like to be a victim and do certain people expect you to be a victim for their own worth. It's very timely for the world we live in today. What I loved about this book was that the way the author tuened the table on things. He made the "victim" do things that he criticized others of doing. The cover of dominoes falling is perfect because it is literally what happens. Just when yout think you can get away with things it all starts to fall and your a left with the destruction of your deeds. But at the end of the day you ar left with yourself and your missteps and have to reevaluate what is important and what isn't. This would be a fantastic book club pick because there is so much to discuss about race, politcal correction, our own prejudices as well as others. Truly a book for our times. Thank you to #doubleday and #netgalley for the read.

The book cover art of this new release so accurately depicts what happens when one little white lie or bent truth kick the domino effect of one man's rise and subsequent fall into motion. In this book, Javier, a promising young writer, learns early enough to play the "diversity" card to achieve success, losing his true self in the process.

This was both a quick read and a very thought-provoking novel. It brings up many questions. Is Javier a victim of his underprivileged upbringing or is he a victim of his own making? The MC's coming of age story, when "diversity" suddenly becomes a buzz word, and the temptation is there to hop on that train, it was interesting to observe how Javi sets himself on a path of inevitable self peril. He choses to ignore the red flags and being called out on stretching the truth or "taking artistic liberties" with his reporting of social injustices. I really felt sorry for the guy, because this was a tough life lesson he received.

Great conclusion... Be real, don't pretend. But also: victims are powerful. Real friends and family are the ones to be there when you fall. What a great debut novel! The audiobook was very well narrated and gave the book a great cultural feel. Highly recommend.

(Thanks to @doubledaybooks #gifted.) 𝗩𝗜𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗠 by debut author Andrew Boryga joins Percival Everett’s 𝘌𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦 and R.F. Kuong’s 𝘠𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦 in taking on the publishing industry head on. Specifically, all three books have their main character authors using racial stereotypes to gain (or maintain) access to a world they might otherwise be denied.⁣
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In 𝘝𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘮, Javier Perez is first encouraged to stretch the truth about his “life challenges” in order to gain access to an elite college. It works and Javi has learned this lesson well. A little on the lazy side when it comes to research and supporting evidence, Javi moves through college (and beyond) manipulating the system in any way that moves him further along in the world of journalism, not to mention life in general. ⁣
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I loved the way Boryga used wit and sarcasm to create an unforgettable, unlikeable character who was eager to give readers what they wanted, whether or not it was true. I also really liked that the story was told by Javi in first person, almost like a memoir. He was speaking directly to the readers, including some wonderful snarky asides. Though 𝘝𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘮 shares commonalities with the books mentioned above, it felt very fresh and original. This really was a smart, fun read, so a book I highly recommend! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

loved this romance and how the characters changed through the story. also loved the friends and all of the interesting things that happened during the story. loved the growth of the main character and all of her trials .

Thank you to NetGalley, author Andrew Boryga, and Doubleday Books for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

This was SUCH a fun read!! I absolutely flew through and devoured this satirical read-- think Yellowface but if the perpetrator himself was a person of color. This book has a lot to say about a lot of things, so I'm going to keep this short and say pick this up if you're looking for a juicy, flawed character read. Boryga has a writing style that feels so realistic yet his characters are extremely vivid and leap off the page. It was so thought-provoking to see how Javi ended up becoming the "victim" and how different experiences/people can shape our thinking. I will definitely be on the lookout for Boryga's future works because I know that this is just the start, and I cannot wait to see what he has to say in other novels.

Random unconnected thoughts that cascaded through my mind while reading this book: "can you have a white savior complex if you are a POC?" and "hey, this sounds like something Rachel Dolezal might pull." But, in this case, our main character didn't come up with the idea, it was offered to him rather forcefully by someone with a solid influence on him. Where Javier goes from there, however, is all on himself. I think the reader is supposed to follow Javier and see how he is blindly somewhat innocently falling farther and farther into a hole. I didn't feel that way. I got the feeling that he felt he was doing his people a service by sharing these "true stories," thus my savior comment. That self-defense gives him the justification to continue victimizing himself while the reader has a head shaking, shoulder cringing time reading Javier's journey.

Victim by Andrew Boryga

Overview: Javier always wanted to be a writer without having much direction with it. He liked the easy praise in school but shied away from leaning into the critical comments that would help him level up on college assignments. More than writing, he seemed to just want to be famous. From a first encounter with a college councilor to a group he meets at college to an early success at the college newspaper, Javier starts to realize that there's a niche for him to leverage his background growing up in the Bronx into writing opportunities. To keep earning praise, Javier stretches the truth like taffy until it inevitably snaps. This book is the slow chug up the rollercoaster before the bottom drops out from under him and a reflection on his rise and fall. Overall: 4

Characters: 4 Javier is so interesting because I feel like so many of the antiheroes or "unlikeable" lead characters in the trend right now are white women, and this flips the script featuring a Puerto Rican man in this complex role. Javier does a lot wrong. He manipulates, twists the truth, intimidates, and mows people down in the name of getting more likes, clicks, and recognition for his work. And, even as he sort of repents for it throughout the book, he also doesn't seem super apologetic about it all as he narrates the book with the privilege of hindsight. At the same time, Javier is far from irredeemable. While what he did was wrong, the way he guides you through his twisted logic makes it easy to see how he just took the next opportunity in front of him. At the end of the day, it is our culture and society at large that created the bubble for him to capitalize on. While Javier does a lot of people wrong, he's still a compelling main character.

Unsurprisingly, the characters that fill out Javier's world mostly exist in the story to serve its narrative and progression. His mother has a lot of pride and works hard to continue giving him a good life through adulthood. His friend Gio takes a very different path that's ripe for Javier to capitalize on but always has a grounded head on his shoulders. His college girlfriend offers a fascinating foil, and the memory of his deceased father guides his approach to managing his freewheeling writing career.

Plot: 4 The book has a bit of a slow start, but it does pick up to be a fast read. I finished it in two days, and once I got past the first quarter, I didn't want to put it down. I think it suffers from being so linear instead of using strategic flashbacks to fill in background while letting us start in the meat of the story. The first few chapters going through his childhood offers important information, but it's a totally different read as it progresses. So give the book a little time to open up, because when it hits its stride, the slowly unfurling disaster from college onwards is well worth it.

Writing: 4 The book teetered on a real edge for me with the voice. I feel like it did all ultimately come together, but it does play with some tropes that are tricky to fully pull off. One is that it seems to be modeled off of a very direct address memoire style. It's heavily acknowledged we're reading a book within a book, and most chapters and chapter breaks include second person address of the reader. I think that it does work and gives the book the slick vibe it's after, but there were moments where that wavered for me. The fast paced and outlandish series of cascading events, as well as the big picture societal questions it mines, makes up for any weaknesses in the writing itself though.

As I was wrapping up the book, I thought that it would be an interesting paired read with Yellowface as they approach questions of racism, culture, class and privilege, and social media (particularly in the context of publishing) from different angles. They both excel in being very meta while also being quite thoughtful. This is a book that is brutally honest from all angles and will definitely stick with me.

Review release on Reading, Writing, and Me blog and instagram: 3/9/2024

Written as a memoir, ,this satiric novel follows the path taken by Javi after he is told by an advisor that he should package his trauma into college essays. He ends up at a prestigious college and continues to use his life as a springboard to success. A free lance article goes viral but that's where things come to a halt because his friend Gio, who has been in prison, calls him out. Javi is not meant to be a likable character but you will find yourself rooting for him in some indefinable way. The satire is lighter than it could have been (a good thing) but it's pointed enough. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This won't be for everyone- and your personal experience will factor in as you read it- but it's a worthy and insightful look at victimhood.

Victim is a satire about an aspiring Puerto Rican hustler from the Bronx who learns at an early age, that his diversity and identity can provide him with advantages that would otherwise pass him up. This is Yellowface meets The Other Black Girl. Javi capitalizes on it, using it to gain access to a top-notch education and a coveted writing job.
While Javi focuses on high school, his best friend Gio joins a gang and is sent to prison on a drug trafficking conviction. Javi follows a different path and learns he can leverage the role of victim to stand out from his peers and do more with his life. Thinking of himself as a hustler like his drug dealer father, he writes essays for the school paper in which he capitalizes on outrage over social justice issues by embellishing his experiences. After graduation, Javi pursues a freelance writing career, and a similarly artfully written but dishonest piece ends up going viral. It’s only when he reunites with a recently released Gio, who suggests his work doesn’t ring true, that Javi begins to look in the mirror.
Victim shows how easily manipulating experiences of race and identity can affect not only one man but the masses who consume his written word. I enjoyed this story and rated it 4 stars. I liked it more than Yellowface in how it expressed its point and it gave me a great deal to think about. I highly recommend this book.

Compelling characters aiming to find their identity in contemporary New York and America at large. This title accurately speaks to the experience of minorities and first generation immigrants in private higher education institutions. This reminded me of Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour and also, My Time Among the Whites by Jennine Capo Crucet.

Victim is an interesting book, it takes some of the conversations around privilege and turns them on their head. Javi is a working class kid from the Bronx who does well in school and gets some advice that to apply for a good college scholarship, he should turn himself more into a victim of the neighborhood and his race, which then turns into a regular activity as he moves through college and a career.

I have a little theory about the ending of the book, but don't want to post spoilers, so hope I can discuss this with others once it's published!

It's a pretty sad story, although most of it is fun and entertaining.

Wow! Boryga's debut VICTIM covered some interesting concepts. Like YELLOWFACE, it is satirical in its take on publishing and media, diversity, and how stories are portrayed. In this novel, the main character Javier realizes that being a victim, whether a victim of societal oppression or of other people's hypocrisy, elevates how his writing is received.

I thought it was really unique in how it showed the evolution of Javier's real life juxtaposed against the life he portrayed in his writing. I thought it went in-depth into the hypocrisy of, well, everyone because each of us has a complicated mixture of motivations.

I really liked the exploration of Javier's relationship with his girlfriend, from college through early adulthood, in particular. I thought it was extremely nuanced.

This is a very character-driven novel, and it gives the reader a lot to think about. I cannot wait to read Boryga's next novel, but once I realized that it took him 10 years to write this one, I think I might need to remain very patient.

Victim is both an incisive satire and an entry in the increasingly popular genre of building tension by having the protagonist make increasingly misguided choices. It’s propulsive and entertaining with an ending that gives you a lot to chew on.

An impressive debut and one I think I’ll be thinking about for some time. I think Boryga drives home some really important reflections about our cultures obsession with victimhood. After turning the last page I felt a little unsatisfied and now am wondering if I’m part of the problem. Smart and thought provoking and perhaps a bit predictable I flew through this story. The ending seemed a bit too tidy and I felt a bit distanced from Javier but perhaps that was intentional? Overall a worthwhile read.

Wow! This book was amazing. I devoured this story about a young man from the Bronx whose "trifecta of the right skin color, right birthplace, and tragedy" both builds and leads to the downfall of his writing career. The writing and story were addictive. It gave me Yellowface vibes. Highly recommend!

my biggest question after finishing the bumbling, basic VICTIM was who, exactly, is this book for? it's ineffectual satire won't be read by the politically and socially conservative crowd that boryga seems to hail from, and its message is not a match for litfic's progressive and generally white audience, who will either deeply dislike and distrust its overall tone or in an attempt to distance themselves from the "woke left" boryga is trying to skewer call it things like "transgressive" and "bold" and "morally complex," of which it is none. while i think VICTIM's concept is unique and could've been smartly executed by someone funnier and with a sharper sense of character motivation, boryga instead arrives with bad intentions, seemingly unable to afford any of his characters a single crumb of nuance. he relies instead on dated, inane, cringey strawmen to represent every one of the "woke" folks in javi's orbit, from his girlfriends to liberal arts college classmates to twitter activists and mainstream media journalists. boryga also tragically and deeply underdevelops javi - one can't make any emotional connection to such a passive and unsympathetic character with little interiority who, ironically, seems marked only by his circumstances and the things that happen to him instead of emotional or psychological complexity. even worse, boryga's prose never exceeds a 12th grade level, and most of VICTIM reads like you fed a horny teen boy, the “old man yells at cloud meme,” 2011 tumblr posts, fox news, and some mid 2010s twitter discourse into an AI chatbot and told it to write a basic summary of its inputs. to market VICTIM as a satire with comps like yellowface, paul beatty and percival everett’s erasure (and its new film adaption american fiction) is hilariously offensive, almost convincing me that the marketing team got their hands on some of those sweet bronx street drugs that javi's friend inevitably went away for selling because his character was simply too weak to be a polite, upstanding member of society, in contrast to colorblind javi, who was just naively manipulated by idiotic leftists into framing himself as a victim of oppression and racism when in fact, one can simply choose not to be a victim. ending this novel with a sympathy play for javi without him ever truly understanding or atoning for his mistakes tells you all you need to know about boryga's motivations in writing and publishing VICTIM. i frankly wish someone else had written about this fascinating concept, because boryga isn't clear-eyed enough to make any of it work.

appreciate the opportunity from doubleday to read this early!

The epigraph for this book was perfectly chosen. It is a quote from James Baldwin, “ perhaps the turning point in one’s life is realizing that to be treated like a victim is not necessarily to become one.” That quote tells you exactly where the book is going and the author does it with humor, irony, and great pacing. This is a coming of age story. Javier, the protagonist, went from a rough neighborhood in the Bronx to an elite school in upstate New York. His best friend, dropped out of high school, and went to prison for selling drugs. While Javier was in college, he was taught by his peers that he was a victim of society. He started to use the victim rhetoric to get the girl he wanted, become a big man on campus, and eventually to capitalize on it for his career. This is an easy and fun read that pokes fun at the overuse of underprivileged. It has a propulsive plot, and a very satisfying ending. I highly recommend this book. 4.5 stars

This was a very timely topic and I think something everyone could benefit from. Such a good read for all!
The story was so well done, I couldn't put it down. The details of the Bronx were incredible and the details about the MC's life were captivating.

Thank you, NetGalley and Doubleday Books for allowing me to review this book

Whipsmart doesn't even begin to cover this novel. This book is sharp enough to cut deep, and no one is spared from its satire. Tokenism is on trial, and so are allies whose allyhood is based on convenience and the attention they get, but also, the world of journalism and media isn't spared. I recommend Boryga's book to everyone, but especially those in the media and education spaces.

Andrew Boryga's novel, Victim, skirts the boundaries of hero/anti-hero in its sendup of half-hearted attempts towards diversity in publishing and journalism. The novel follows protagonist Javi Perez through his childhood with his drug dealer father and hard-working mother, and his close friendship with Gio, on through his college career, where he first learns the value of exploiting racial trauma to his own benefit. The popularity of his work eventually leads to greater success and to more exposure. This book reminds me of RF Kuang's Yellowface and Zakiya Harris's The Other Black Girl, both in subject matter and cringey storylines.